Post Traumatic
by GhostMomma
Summary: Harry and the other student combatants in his year who survived the War are invited back to finish their education in an "intensive eighth year." Unfortunately, war is hard, and the former student combatants... yeah, they're not doing so well. Harry/Draco, with some ambiguously categorized business with Hermione that they're pretty insistent that you should just deal with.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not my characters-I mean, they're real, right? Can't own them if they're real!

Eighth year. The Boy Who Lived lived again, defeated Voldemort, endured every ceremony and every funeral and every single goddamned "celebration," turned down the position of Minister of Magic (Seriously?!), and finally, eventually, fought through the other side of the chaos that was post-War Magical Britain in an effort to make a normal life for himself, only to end up here.

Hogwarts.

Eighth year.

At least he didn't have to sit at his house table this year. Would his knees even fit underneath it anymore? Harry and the other eighth years (Eighth years. EIGHTH YEARS!) had their own table at the far end of the house tables, and their table was round. They had their own dormitory in their own tower in the castle, and their dormitory had private rooms. Thank Merlin for small favors. Harry was sure that his own room would not be the only one warded to high heaven against letting any sound of the shrieking nightmares within escape, much less its sleepwalking, wand-wielding shrieker.

Actually, Harry wasn't sure that he wasn't the only one who destroyed furniture with his wand while sleepwalking through nightmares of the War, but he hoped he wasn't. If you're going to be crazy, might as well be crazy with company.

Although… did the company really have to be at Hogwarts? Hogwarts, where every hallway had to be magically scrubbed free of blood (and it's true, you know. You can never *really* get all the blood out), where every turn revealed the location of a former tragedy, where the tiny little eleven-year-old Ravenclaws were right now swinging their feet exactly above the spot where the bodies of Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin had been laid, as they listened to Headmistress McGonagall's welcome speech.

he first-year Gryffindors were sitting over the body of Fred Weasley.

"No," Harry corrected himself. "Not Fred. Just … where Fred once was." His mind healer was very insistent about accuracy in language.

Harry didn't know what mind healers the other eighth years had (but he knew that they had them; mind healing was required for all school-age combatants, and highly recommended for the rest of the general magical population), but he knew that regardless, they all looked as ragged and worn-out as he knew that he did. Ron and Hermione looked the best, cleaving to each other as they did, but Hermione's eyes were tired and Ron, who had always loved his food, was gaunt, and he was pretty clearly wearing one of Fred's sweaters. Neville and Luna stuck together, too, although mainly what they did, it seemed, was watch each other's backs against invisible enemies; they sat close but turned away from each other, near hands lightly touching, and their eyes roamed constantly. Just constantly.

Draco Malfoy, however, looked the worst; he'd probably give Harry a run for his money for the Appearing to be Most Traumatized award. He was well groomed (the mind healers were very insistent on maintaining one's proper grooming; appearing for a session unshowered or in stained clothing was worth an automatic transfer to "in-house healing"), but he looked nothing like the former nemesis whom Harry had once so loved to hate so passionately. His hair was practically shaven. His clothes, what Harry could see of them underneath the school robes, were Muggle. His eyes were old.

At least his paleness was in character.

Harry tried to look at the younger, eager students across the room, listening attentively to the speech (not even Hermione was listening at his table), and feel happy for them, but all he felt was tired.

"Intensive Eighth Year" was what it was officially called; the idea was to bring back all the students who had been seventh years last year; even the students who'd been able to attend had mostly just learned about suffering and fear. These eighth years had an intense schedule, and it was hoped that they would be able to take their NEWTs and graduate by Christmas. The second through seventh years also had an accelerated schedule, also to make up for the entire last year's lost learning. Only the first years were going to have a completely normal Hogwarts experience this year, and as the class schedules were passed out on the first school morning, those first years were the subject of a lot of quiet envy. Such excitement in those kids' eyes, as they received schedules packed with brand-new classes and clutched brand-new wands in sweaty, nervous hands; even the ones who'd had their families murdered, or who were themselves tortured by Death Eaters, looked like they belonged to an entirely different world from the students who bore the "combatant" label.

At least Harry didn't have to take Defense against the Dark Arts this final semester, he thought, taking a look at his schedule, then scrubbing one hand across his tired eyes, wrapping up a bacon sandwich to stuff in his book bag (he also figured that he wasn't the only one whom a year of privation had turned into a food hoarder) and heading out with the other eighth years to their small group classes. He, Hermione, Ron, and Neville had been awarded their NEWTs in DADA with the utmost pomp in an emotionally gutting and utterly humiliating ceremony a couple of months ago. In the end, Harry had only consented to attend that ceremony because of the promise of that NEWT, and when the ceremony had also turned out to include the honorary Hogwarts graduation of every dead non-Death Eater student in his grade, complete with the reading of every dead student's name and the awarding of a diploma to every dead student's grief-stricken family… well, at least he didn't have to take Defense against the Dark Arts this final semester. There was always that to hold onto.

It turned out that bacon sandwich came in handy, as did all the snacks that, yes, it turned out that every other eighth year had sneaked away with (No fewer than four apples rolled out of Hermione's bag at one point, and other than the sound causing Hannah Abbott to briefly leap to her feet with wand drawn, there was no reaction, even from the professors, to this clear defiance of the All Food Must Remain within the Great Hall rule). Whether they'd spent the past year suffering in Hogwarts or outside of it, none of the eighth years were much used to studying lately, or to sitting still for long hours, or to acting normal in the company of others, to be quite frank.

The eighth years, trying to sit still and study and look normal, or whatever they thought they remembered that normal might look like, all sat inside the large classroom that had been set aside for their sole use this year. They were meant to work through much of the material independently, although certain times were set aside for demonstrations and practical work with the professors, and there were several retired professors, Ministry officials, and employees of the many relevant fields who had also volunteered to be on hand in shifts to tutor the students. It was, it didn't take long for Harry to admit, listening to an actual potion master explain to him, using short words that he could understand, some ignorant little question that he'd had that he was sure would have been worth at least twenty minutes of shame in Snape's classroom, not a bad way to learn.

"Don't think about Snape," Harry chided himself in a manner that his mind healer would NOT approve of, and, after writing down the potion master's explanation and reading through it again to make sure he understood it, pulled out his Transfiguration textbook instead.

After a couple of hours of this study, switching subjects whenever he felt weary, asking questions whenever he didn't understand something, watching a demonstration of Proper Techniques of Self-Levitation just for fun, Harry felt himself almost actually settle in, and when he looked up again from his textbooks and saw that another entire hour had passed without the unwelcome intrusion of an awful memory, he thought that there might actually be some benefits to this studying business. Unobtrusively, he passed the last half of his bacon sandwich over to Hermione, who just as unobtrusively, just as she'd done with an apple and a scone already, set it at just the perfect angle next to Ron's book that he picked it up without noticing what he was doing and began to eat it, attention entirely upon what he was studying. Hermione spared Harry a small smile, and in return, Harry felt himself do something that he couldn't remember doing since sixth year in this same classroom.

He smiled back.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. You'd know if I did, because you'd always be walking in on Harry and Draco snogging in empty classrooms.

And about that… yeah, Draco and Harry are gonna fall in lurve here. You've been warned.

After the group studying Arithmancy had finally finished their heated debate of… whatever they were debating by basically just throwing numbers back and forth at each other (literally. School of magic, you know?), the eighth years broke for lunch. They were tending to move in a pack, Harry knew, but it was safer that way.

"No, it's also safe to walk alone," Harry corrected to himself. His mind healer had kind eyes, impossibly untainted by the War, and he liked it when he had what she called "healthy self-determined thoughts" to tell her that he'd thought.

Some weeks he had none.

As soon as he'd noticed his year's herd behavior, though, he noticed that he was incorrect. All of the eighth years weren't together in one safe ("It's also safe to walk alone") pack; Draco was hanging back. Even Blaise was with the group—he was talking quietly with Neville, of all people—but Draco... just wasn't. But as Harry watched without really meaning to, Luna also left the group, walked back to Draco, said a few quiet words to him, and then must have received some sort of response, because Draco quickened his steps to rejoin the group with her.

And now—crap!—he was walking next to Harry, Luna on his other side, Seamus near-ish Harry on Harry's other side but decidedly not talking (one more thing to hate about the War; it had robbed the joy off of Seamus. How cruel), and Harry itched with both the desire not to talk to anyone ever again and, weirdly, the desire to talk to Draco. He'd experienced only the former desire for so long that he didn't recognize the latter at first. Then he thought to himself, "What the hell," (he thought this often now, and often about what his mind healer determined "inappropriately unhealthy actions").

"Hey, Draco," Harry said.

"Hey," Draco replied, and shot him a brief, small look. They didn't speak again on the way to the Great Hall, but the walk was almost—dare he admit it? His mind healer would like it if he did—comfortable. And when they arrived at their round table, the younger students just finishing up their own lunches and heading back to class (Harry was also supposed to collect "moments worthy of gratitude" for his mind healer, and one of them was the fact that because the eighth years had longer classes and shorter breaks, they didn't have to share their lunch period with the noisy, sweet, gossiping, gaping younger grades), and Draco sat down, it also seemed… comfortable for Harry to sit down next to him.

And then they were… chatting. Were they chatting? Was this what chatting looked like? Harry couldn't remember. Regardless, Draco said to Harry, "Would you pass the roast beef?", and Harry said to Draco, "Sure. Do you want the gravy, too?", and Draco said, "No, I always thought the Hogwarts gravy tasted funny," and Harry said, "It's because they use broth, not milk," and Draco said, "What an odd thing to know, Potter. How on earth do you know that?", and Harry said, "I made so much gravy in my youth, Malfoy, you would not believe. My cousin, Dudley, was pretty much made of gravy." That was chatting, right?

Before his brain could stop his mouth, then, Harry said, "Funny that I used to be so scared of Dudley." That was not a good thing to say, but all that stupid… chatting! It had made him unwary. Harry felt his heartbeat speeding up, because thinking of Dudley led to thinking about not being scared of Dudley any longer, which led to thinking about why he wasn't scared of Dudley any longer, which led to thinking about all the much, much scarier things that happened to him that could make child abuse pale in comparison, which led to bad things. Bad things that he shouldn't think about in public, where he was trying to act normal, goddamnit.

Harry shot a quick, panicked look at Draco, able to see the concern painted across his face (He must look bad, if even Draco could see it and feel concerned), but before he could even try to start the calming breaths and visualization thing that his mind healer recommended, everyone else at the table began to get up and make their way out of the Great Hall (Fucking stupid short lunch breaks!), and Harry couldn't think, couldn't plan, couldn't figure out what to do, so he just followed, like a sheep in the herd.

Harry walked at the back of the group, trying to slow his breaths, trying to remember his Happy Place ("Not the Forest of Dean! NOT the Forest of Dean! Why can I only think of the Forest of Dean?!"), but the cold sweat that he could feel running down the back of his neck let him know that this wasn't working.

BANG! BANG! BANGBANGBANG!

Oh, God, they'd broken through the doors! Harry pulled out his wand and spun on his heel; he needed to curse them before they could get to the younger students! He knew Colin Creevey had sneaked back to fight and he had to curse them before they got to him!

A blunt force slammed him before he could let his spell fly—please not a werewolf!—and suddenly Harry was no longer in the hallway, but in a dark classroom. Someone had him around the waist, pinning his arms to his sides, and Harry tried to gather his bearings, tried to look around him, tried to figure out who would have attacked him but not hurt him yet. Were they going to take him to Voldemort?

Only… oh. Voldemort was dead. Harry had killed him. The Battle of Hogwarts was over. Colin had died. Harry… was safe. He relaxed.

Immediately, so did the arms pinning him, and he slowly turned around, ready to see a professor, ready to listen to that professor yell at him for losing the plot, for almost cursing students, to tell him that it was time for his transfer to In-House Healing, but instead he saw only Draco Malfoy.

"Fireworks," said Draco.

Oh.

"Thanks," Harry said.

"Want to talk about it?"

Harry couldn't believe it, but… he kind of did. He actually kind of wanted to tell Malfoy what had gone through his head. Would Malfoy say the same things as his mind healer? Or would he understand?

"What the hell," Harry thought.

The two sat side-by-side against the wall next to the door (the safest spot—"No, all the spots are safe to sit at now"), ignoring the chairs, while Harry told him, tried to explain as well as he could through stiff lips, gesturing with shaking hands, wondering the whole time what the hell he was doing. Malfoy frowned at Harry's mention of Dudley, asked what the Forest of Dean was but seemed to accept Harry's insufficient explanation that it was a place where they'd hidden while on the run from Death Eaters, and flinched at the part about the werewolves ("Oh, shit, of course he would. Stupid!"), but he was quiet when Harry finally petered off awkwardly.

"Now he's going to suggest we tell Headmistress McGonagall," Harry thought, feeling shattered and ashamed at his confession. "He's going to use his Panic Portkey to take me to his mind healer and make me stay there. He's going to tell me that it's no wonder I can't cope, if I'm so cowardly that fireworks scare me."

But Malfoy didn't say any of those things. He didn't look at Harry like he was crazy, or small, or weak. Instead he looked at him solemnly, the way that Harry himself looked at everything these days, but his eyes had more life in them than Harry had lately seen. He nudged his shoulder against Harry's just briefly, just slightly, and he—Harry couldn't believe it, but it must be true—he actually said it, not "mind healers" or "Panic Portkey" or "can't cope" but just what Harry had wanted him to say, just the way that Harry had hoped, in exactly the way that it couldn't be denied.

"I understand," he said.

The two sat together for a little while longer, until Harry no longer felt sweaty and shaky, and then Malfoy stood up and offered a hand to Harry. "Ready, Harry?" he asked.

Harry blinked, but calmly replied, "Ready, Draco," and took Draco's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. Together they walked back to class, close enough that sometimes their shoulders still nudged each other just briefly. Just slightly.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I still don't own these characters, but Christmas IS coming up, if anyone wants to give them to me!

After classes were finally over for the day (the eighth years keeping at it until just before dinner, fucking Merlin), and dinner had been endured (Dean Thomas had briefly wept when pudding was served—what beloved person whom he'd lost had been fond of spotted dick?), the eighth years' relief at being back in their quiet tower was frank and palpable. Harry, himself, had felt it as a weight releasing, and his shoulders relaxed as soon as he walked through the hidden door to the common room. There was no one to pretend normalcy around here. No need to pretend he cared that Ginny hadn't spoken to him since he'd told her (fine—screamed in her face. His mind healer had not been pleased; her mind healer had wanted to have him incarcerated) that they were never getting back together. No need to ignore the younger students who stared at him with hero worshipping eyes (they made him feel sick, those eyes. They made him want to grab those little kids by their throats and tell them about the time during the Battle that a curse had misfired, so instead he'd stabbed a Death Eater in the eye with his wand ). Not even the professors were allowed in the eighth year common room without an invitation.

Harry's thoughts still in a dark flurry, second-guessing each other, constantly adding inappropriate asides, he entered his room, set the wards with a gesture, and threw himself down on his bed. What would help? What should he do? Sleep? He was always tired, but never sleepy, and anyway, it was too early. His mind healer wouldn't like to learn that he'd gone to bed at 7 pm; that didn't sound like him coping.

Under his bed, Harry knew, was something that he wanted and didn't want, something that he didn't want to do but knew that he should, a comfort that he didn't want to lose and a risk that he didn't want to take. It would be something else to think about, though. Something else to do besides think. "What the hell," Harry thought, and rolled off his bed, crouched down, and drew out his trunk.

He could have spent some time rifling through old school books, or opening his wand box to look at a couple of Hedwig's feathers and a broken piece of mirror inside, or running the fabric of his Invisibility Cloak through his hands and remembering his father's face, but instead he dove straight through all the stuff, right down to the bottom, and pulled out an impossibly small hand-knit sweater from a long-ago Christmas, rolled up tightly and tied shut with a shoelace. When he undid the knot and unrolled the sweater, he held Draco's old wand in his hands.

The placement of the wand, all tied up and in the very bottom of his trunk, might have implied that Harry never touched it, never thought about it, had forgotten all about it, but the truth was far, far from that. Every single day Harry rifled through his trunk and unwrapped that wand, sometimes many times a day. He held it in his upturned palms and looked at it, he put it in his pocket next to his own wand and carried it around, he slept with it curled tightly in his hand, and when he did so, he never seemed to find himself abruptly awake and spewing curses in the middle of the night. When he held Draco's wand,he let himself indulge in the same stupid fantasies that he'd indulged in back as a real boy at Hogwarts. It _was_ stupid, and he loathed himself for it, but… it helped him cope. Whenever Harry finally grew ashamed enough, he'd wrap Draco's wand back up and tie it tightly with the shoelace and stuff it back down in the bottom of his trunk.

Harry stood up so fast that he saw spots for a second, but now that he knew that he was doing this, he wanted it done. Out his door and to his left and across the hall and three doors down stood Draco's door. Harry knocked, then realized that his knock pounded with a reverberation that sounded like a psychopath trying to break down Draco's door, and knocked again like a normal person. Probably too much time passed, but Harry still stood there—his plan had totally ended with this knock, so he figured he'd just stand until either something else occurred to him or all hell broke loose like usual—and then finally, just when he was thinking that maybe he'd go find Ron and sit next to him for a while, maybe hold this wand in his lap and stare at the fireplace, Draco pulled upon the door.

Draco looked pretty ragged, and if he'd spent that extra time before answering in cleaning himself up, then Harry couldn't imagine what he must have looked like before. His eyes were red and wet, and there were wet spots on his oversized Muggle shirt, which was a black gone flat from too many washings, and made from a poor fabric that had allowed the collar to stretch out enough to show off Draco's collarbones.

Harry was staring. He shouldn't stare. He couldn't stop staring. Fucking Merlin, there was no way he was going to convince anyone that he was normal, staring at Draco's collarbones like this. He looked up, unhappily noting that yes, Draco had definitely noticed him staring, although the expression in his face was unreadable. What should he do? Oh, words!

"I… um…" Harry started, and then paused, mentally kicking himself for not having prepared his plan further than standing here at this door. Imagine if he'd stopped his planning at the door of Gringott's!

Don't think about Gringott's.

"Do you want to come inside?" Draco asked. "Thank Merlin for those pureblood manners," Harry thought, and answered gratefully (Ooh! A moment of gratitude!), "Yeah, thanks."

Draco's room was rather nice, actually. Harry wondered if Mrs. Malfoy had come up at the beginning of term to make it comfortable for him, because it was loads better than the anonymous décor of Harry's room. Draco had what looked like his own comforter rather than a school-issued one, and a fire going in the fireplace, and even a couple of squashy chairs set up in front of the fire but sort of facing each other, with a stool in front of them that held—sweet Merlin, Draco had hot tea and chocolate biscuits! Harry's room didn't have hot tea and chocolate biscuits and a nice fire! Harry made a mental note that all future plans must revolve, in some way, around hot tea and chocolate biscuits and a nice fire. Perhaps that alone would keep him out of another War.

Don't think about the War.

Catalyzing another moment of gratitude that Harry set aside to mention to his mind healer, Draco moved towards the comfy chairs and cozy fire and said, "Please, sit down. Mum sent one of the house elves to take care of me this year, to help me 'cope'" (with air quotes, so Harry knew that at least he wasn't the only one whose mind healer went on and on about "coping" and its importance and Harry's troubling failure to do so thus far), "and apparently coping involves lots of tea and biscuits, and lots of fussing when they're not consumed."

"I might actually be able to handle coping if there were tea and biscuits involved," said Harry, taking a seat—happily? Was he feeling happy?—and accepting a mug of tea from Draco and a biscuit from the tray. "I guess I could have brought my house elf, too, but I never quite know if he's going to feed me up or murder me in my sleep."

"Only you would have an insane house elf." Did Draco say that fondly? Not sneeringly? Not contemptuously? Not disgustedly? A Draco that spoke to him and sounded fond was… surprisingly okay. Harry wondered if he was doing a marvelous job of coping right now, or if his sanity had utterly cracked and he just hadn't noticed.

The two were quiet for a while, sipping tea and munching biscuits and staring into the fireplace ("See?" thought Harry. "I can plan. Sitting next to Ron and staring at the fire in the common room would have been a good Plan B"). This was actually, however, for some reason that Harry didn't feel like pinning down right then, even better than sitting next to Ron in the common room and staring at the fire there. There were tea and biscuits, for one thing, and fewer eyes—even understanding, also suffering eyes were often too many eyes. And Draco… Harry liked sitting here with Draco, liked looking at Draco when Draco's eyes were on the fire, liked feeling Draco's eyes on him when he, in turn, settled his eyes on the flames. If he'd known that he could just knock on Draco's door and then come in and sit with him, he might not have brought the wand at all.

But he had. And he had to do this next thing, as well, even if it ruined all future sitting by fires together and squatting in empty classrooms together and walking to and from meals together. Harry sat his mug down, turned fully towards Draco, and said, "I brought you something. I should have given it back a long time ago, but I kept it instead. Sorry."

Harry reached into the pocket of the shirt underneath his sweater (Mad-Eye Moody would NOT have approved of that awkward wand placement, but not everybody could rock the forearm holster as casual wear), distinguished Draco's wand from his own by feel, and pulled it out. He held it in his own two hands for a few last precious seconds, just looking at it, then held it out to Draco.

The look in Draco's eyes as he stared at his own wand in Harry's outthrust hand was hard to read. Eager? Frightened? Sad? Harry had made a passion of watching Draco for so many years that he was surprised not to immediately understand the expression in Draco's face. He held the wand steady in his hand, however, watching Draco and waiting, and eventually Draco tentatively reached out his own hand for his wand. He didn't just take it, though; no, he instead put his own hand over Harry's, taking his wand from Harry's grasp as Harry relinquished it, letting Harry feel the trail of Draco's thin, warm fingers between his own and across his palm.

At least Harry now knew the answer to his earlier question to himself. He had gone dead crazy. He was flat-out insane. When Draco's fingers touched his own, Harry had had the sudden urge to grab Draco's wrist, yank him over, lay him down across his lap and… no. With Draco's wand out of his possession, he had no reason to go to that place in his mind ever again, and his mind healer could go fuck herself and her constant exhortations to "Be honest with yourself, Harry." Fuck her, and fuck Dra…

Well. Never mind.

Harry knew that this would be uncomfortable, and as he watched Draco sitting forward in his chair, holding his wand in his hands and looking down at it in silence, he waited for many of the most uncomfortable things that he'd been the most dreading to happen—Draco would ask why Harry had kept his wand so long, Draco would ask why Harry had kept his wand at all, Draco would ask what atrocities Harry had committed with his wand (stabbing a Death Eater in the eye, for instance?), Draco would ask if Harry had ever held his wand and thought about him because his wand was giving out creepy vibes right now—but he never, NEVER expected to see Draco suddenly, without warning, begin to weep.

It wasn't the way that Harry sometimes cried, in which he sometimes just found himself with tears running down his cheeks and no conscious idea as to why (other than the obvious…). It wasn't the way that Ron cried, angrily wiping at his tears as quickly as he shed them, sometimes throwing whatever was at hand at the walls and screaming about Fred (Don't think about Fred). It wasn't even the way that Hermione cried, and watching Hermione cry—Hermione, whom Harry sometimes let himself imagine still living in the Forest of Dean with, the world in ruins around a peaceful bubble of just themselves, some camping gear, and probably a million stolen books by this time—made Harry feel sick, and angry, and regretful even now.

Fucking Merlin, watching Draco cry was worse than all of that. Draco cried in heaves, as if he couldn't breathe, and with his head hanging down, as if there was nothing in the world worth looking up for.

He cried hopelessly.

Harry saw this, hated what he saw, and before his fucking sarcastic inner monologue could talk him out of it or make fun of him for it or ask what the fuck his mind healer would think, he pushed himself off of his chair, shoved past Draco's clenched hands with that wand in between them, and knelt down in between Draco's spread knees, putting one hand on the back of Draco's neck and pressing Draco's head down to Harry's shoulder, wrapping his other arm around Draco's shoulders and holding him close.

Harry expected Draco to pull away, maybe curse him with his recovered wand, but Draco just continued to cry, the head that turned to bury his face against the spot where Harry's neck met his shoulder and the hands, wand still in one, that now clenched fistfuls of Harry's sweater being the only signs that he knew that he had not been left to grieve alone.

What were the comforting things that one murmured to another in this case? "It will be okay" was obviously a lie. So Harry said nothing, but he held Draco tight, he let the fingers of the hand on the back of Draco's neck lightly run over the soft, short hair at its nape, and he let the arm around Draco's shoulders curl him even closer to him.

Harry was pretty sure that he was a monster for enjoying this, but still.

It took a long time for Draco to begin to calm down, and even longer for his sobs to cease, but finally, he released his death-grip on Harry's sweater, lifted his head from the crook of Harry's neck, scrubbed roughly at his eyes, and sat back. He looked at Harry a little anxiously and said, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," said Harry. "I once spent an entire day on the couch hugging my broomstick and listening to the Weird Sisters and crying. Even my mind healer couldn't tell me what the fuck that was about."

Draco barked out a laugh in spite of himself, looking surprised while he did so, as if he couldn't quite remember what laughing was like. "It's just…" began Draco, then, "Oh, Merlin, I know you think I'm insane, now, as well as being some kind of Muggle-hating monster, but… oh, fuck, please sit down; I am so sorry. I am definitely going to have to go to In-House Healing when my mind healer hears about this."

"Nah," said Harry. "Just tell her—him? My mind healer's a woman—that you found it cathartic. My mind healer LOVES that one. That's what kept me out of Azkaban when I accidentally screamed in Ginny's face that we weren't getting back together, and she even claimed that I was wandlessly holding her against a wall at the time, which was probably true. It actually _was_ kind of cathartic, to be honest, but don't tell anyone I said that. The whole scene was… not good."

"I'd wondered why you and Weaselette weren't busy making little weasels these days," said Draco, and despite his nobler intentions, Harry found it sort of endearing to hear Draco obviously attempting to be offensive. Healthy desire for normality, his mind healer would say. Bravo.

"I think she wanted to. I think that was how she wanted to 'cope' (and now he was using the air quotes, too, sigh), but at the time I was busy coping by feeling nothing, and also by 'acting out sexually' with her oldest brother, which she caught me doing. That's still the method that I'd prefer—the emotional numbness, NOT the blowjobs with Charlie Weasley—but my mind healer does not approve."

"Is Charlie the one with the wife from the Triwizard Tournament, or the dragon tamer one?"

"Dragon tamer."

"Nice. That still going on?"

"No, it was just a thing. An ill-advised thing. Crap as a coping method, too, since it led to me pretty much attacking my ex-girlfriend."

"Sometimes I'd like to feel nothing," Draco said, then clenched his hands around his wand again, and stared intently down at them. He was silent for a very long time, and Harry wondered if perhaps he should excuse himself, but then Draco began to speak. "Thank you for my wand, Harry." He was silent again for another several seconds, then said, "When they dragged you in, I thought that I was going to sell you out, I really did. Having to live there—it was awful, which is stupid to say, because of course it was awful, but it was. Awful. Scary. Bloody. He'd Crucio you for fun, or curse you, or make you Crucio your mother, and if you couldn't… he'd do other things to you until you could. It was… hard on the mind. I thought that I'd do anything to please him, just to stay relatively safe, but then they dragged you in, and I was going to sell you out—I was, Harry, I was going to forget all my hopes and everything that I felt about you and sell you out—but I looked at you, I looked at your face—what the hell did Hermione do to you, anyway? You looked… wow—and it was like, after all that time, I finally found myself for a minute. For one solid minute, I finally knew what to do. All the stuff they did to me, they broke me, but I wouldn't let them break you."

"I am broken, though."

"Harry… no," Draco said, and finally looked at him. Holy fuck, were his eyes beautiful. "I don't see that. Nothing can break you."

"Well, nothing can break you, either," said Harry, and then, before his mouth could say even crazier, even more maudlin things, he grabbed a fistful of biscuits, stood up, oh fucking hell he reached out and touched Draco's hair again (crazycrazyCRAZY!), and he left Draco's room and went back to his own.

Safely warded inside, Harry lay on his back on his bed, ate biscuits from off his chest, listened to the Weird Sisters on the radio, and did not cry. He listened to the music, he let himself wander through a thousand different tantalizing possibilities about what Draco might have meant by "all my hopes" and "everything that I felt about you," he toyed with his wand and thankfully did not wish that he was holding another's.

He almost possibly felt okay.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. You'd know if I did, because the books wouldn't be appropriate for children.

The next day could have been yet another repetitive Groundhog Day of neverending academics and awkward encounters with younger students (Ginny had been telling tales, and many girls were now giving him leery looks. Not that he cared), but Harry had a secret. And after dinner that night, after everyone was safely back in their common room and engrossed in whatever coping behaviors their mind healers had recommended (much sitting quietly. Much fireplace staring), Harry thought that he might feel a little bit happy as he brushed his teeth, sighed at his perpetually messy hair, and walked down the hall to knock at Draco's door.

"Hey," he said when Draco answered (looking a lot better than he had yesterday, thank Merlin). "Got anymore biscuits?"

"Come in, Potty," said Draco. "Let's get you fat and see what your mind healer says about it."

After that, the rest of the month was… surprisingly bearable. Harry studied hard, made himself eat an appropriate amount and variety of food at meal times (his mind healer was big on proper nutrition for emotional healing), aided Hermione in her quiet quest to also sneak an appropriate amount and variety of food into Ron, kept reminding himself that you really couldn't see the blood on the walls and floor anymore and that the Ravenclaws didn't mean to keep being so happy while they ate and the Gryffindors could not be hexed for asking for his autograph, and every night he hung out in Draco's room. Draco never showed up at Harry's door (which was fine, because Harry's room was crap and Draco's was great), but readily opened his own door to Harry's knock every single evening, and seemed to spend his evenings as willingly with Harry as Harry did with him.

Sometimes they played chess. Sometimes they listened to the radio. They never worked on homework (after ten solid hours of study, broken only by one short mealtime, who would?), although they did sometimes practice their spellwork together. They always consumed a metric ton of tea and biscuits. One night Harry appeared with an Exploding Snap deck, explaining embarrassedly that his mind healer thought it might help "desensitize" him, and the two played every night for several nights, and almost the entirety of one Saturday, until Harry thought that he actually might have a fighting chance at thinking "Exploding Snap" rather than "Death Eaters kill kill KILL!" the next time that he heard fireworks in the hall (his mind healer was a clever woman, who, he was pretty sure, was reading a LOT between the lines in their conversations about Draco). Another night, Harry had the brilliant idea of dragging his entire comic book collection over to Draco's room, and Draco, after Harry had patiently explained the concept of every single different comic book over again several times, thought that they were pretty brilliant, too.

One Friday night in late September, they got very, very drunk.

Draco got drunk way before Harry. In fact, he was already very drunk by the time Harry knocked on his door that evening (a little later than usual, maybe, as he'd lost a lot of time fussing over and swearing at his hair. He needed to ask Hermione for a haircut, sigh), and he opened the door stinking of firewhiskey, gave Harry an inscrutable look, and simply gestured him inside.

"Draco…" Harry began worriedly. He'd felt something off about Draco all day, had felt that he was too much in his head for his own good, was struggling to lose himself to the restful (emotionally restful, rather—mentally, it was fucking hard!) retreat that study had become for all of them. Harry hadn't wanted to bring it up, though, knowing how much harder it was to hang onto one's control in the middle of a busy school day than it was in one's room in the quiet of the evening, but he couldn't help but feel dismayed that this was how Draco had chosen to let go. Harry had rather thought that maybe he'd draw Draco out in quiet conversation, there'd be some airing of feelings, and then…

"What I wouldn't give for a good Sexual Acting Out," Harry thought, and then shushed his brain. He'd secretly creep on Draco another night.

Fortunately, Draco interrupted Harry before he could even begin to say or think anything else, creepy or not. "My mind healer is going to kill me," Draco said, "because I'm hugely fucked up and even _I_ know that this is a poor coping mechanism, but I just want to get drunk tonight, okay? Turn off the fucking voices, and all the fucking feelings ("Damn!" thought Harry), for just one night, you know? My house elf is probably sitting inside the fireplace back home right now, but I did finally get her to bring me a shit-ton of my father's old firewhiskey, and if you're not too un-fucked up for it, I thought that tonight we could just… turn it off."

Well, Harry thought, if there was one thing that he was NOT, it was un-fucked up. He silently gestured for the flask in Draco's other hand, and silently Draco passed it over.

Much of the rest of that evening was a blur, a lost time that Harry never did figure out how to reclaim, and if anything worthwhile had been said or done by either of them it was gone forever now, but on Saturday morning, Harry and Draco woke up in bed together. Not, like, _together_ together (which, Harry was now quite sure, would be ideal. Did this mean that his sanity had finally cracked? It probably did. But on the bright side, secretly creeping on Draco had proved excellently distracting from more humiliating/dangerous War flashbacks), but more like passed out on top of the same bed together. And touching. And a huuuuuge drool spot under Harry's face that was pressed into Draco's T-shirt at his chest.

If only Harry didn't feel like he was about to die (again. Don't think about it), this would have been awesome.

"Ohhhhh… Merlin. My head's been Crucio'd," groaned Draco, who Harry hadn't even realized was awake. So he'd been lying there and _letting_ Harry drool on his chest. Score one for creeping on someone under physical duress!

"Hermione. Hangover potion. I'll… go get it. Right now… Getting up, walking to door… Not vomiting…"

"Have you gone yet?"

"Definitely. Going. Now!" groaned Harry, and pulled himself to his feet (so what if pulling himself to his feet required accidentally-on-purpose running one hand across Draco's stomach as he did so? He had Officially Diagnosed Issues).

Leaving Draco immobile on the bed, Harry staggered to the door, leaned his head against it until he was nearly positive that he wasn't going to vomit, and then pulled it open and shuffled down to Hermione's room. Susan Bones passed him in the hallway, hair wild and carrying her shoes. At least Harry wasn't the only Walk of Shame this morning.

"This is not the Walk of Shame," he told himself. "Well… not really. I don't think. Probably not, anyway."

Harry was going to knock on Hermione's door like a normal person, but her door was so cool, and pleasant, that Harry instead found himself mostly just leaning against it, trying to find a comfortable spot to ease his pounding head, and so when the door abruptly opened he fell flat at Ron's feet.

"Hermione, someone got Harry!" Ron shouted.

"No, no… 'm fine," mumbled Harry into the carpet, but when Ron rolled him over and started patting him down for injuries, while Hermione crouched over him, rifling through her bottomless bag that must still contain her medical supplies ("Oh, Hermione," Harry had time to think), Harry was able to say it a little more clearly. "I'm fine. Ron, quit groping me, thanks, mate. Fine. Hangover. Potion. Oh, fucking Mer—" and he hoped that they'd understood that, because then he had to vault to his feet, rush off, and spend quite an embarrassingly long time retching into the toilet in Hermione's tidy and formerly clean-smelling bathroom.

Hermione came in a few minutes later, wet a washcloth with cold water, and pressed it to Harry's forehead as he sat next to her toilet.

"Ron went to change clothes," Hermione said. Harry knew, and he knew Hermione knew it, too, that Ron was uncomfortable with his and Hermione's relationship. He and Hermione were platonic by choice now, but those weeks in the forest alone and suffering together… well, there was no taking it away, and the definition of Harry and Hermione is that they were there for each other. Always. Full stop.

"Thanks, Hermione." Harry took the cloth from her and held it to his own head, then the back of his neck, as Hermione—thank fucking Merlin—took out her hangover potion powder and mixed it into a mug of cold water for him. Harry drank it and it tasted like fresh mint and lavender, and it immediately soothed his head and his stomach.

"Harry," began Hermione, "Ron and I didn't have to spend last night totally alone together. You could have come over. We'd even get drunk with you… well, Ron would."

"Actually," Harry said, "I wasn't alone. And oh, Merlin, I'm such an asshole! Could I pleeeease have another hangover potion to take to Draco? I'll help you make more this weekend, if you want. Actually, maybe Draco will help you make more. He's all potiony, too—I bet he'd like it."

"Draco, hmmm? I won't pretend that I haven't noticed you two this week," said Hermione, mixing up some more potion into another clean mug. "It's weird, except that it actually makes a lot of sense. Weird sense, but sense. If anything, I think that he's always been at least as obsessed with you as you always were with him."

"I kind of always was obsessed with him, wasn't I? How did you and Ron stand it?"

"The way that any good friends do; we talked about it behind your back all the time. Ron wanted to give you the 'It's Okay to be Gay' talk a million times, but I kept telling him that he should wait until we actually caught you two snogging. Oh, could you let us catch you two snogging this weekend? It would cheer Ron up to no end if he finally got to give you the talk!"

"We haven't snogged, and honestly, as far as I know, Draco is straight."

"Oh, he's too handsome; there's no way he's straight," said Hermione. "Now rinse your mouth out, just at least try to run your fingers through your hair a bit, and take this hangover potion back to him like the Hero of the Wizarding World that you are."

Harry gaped at her.

"Too soon?" said Hermione, catching the look on his face.

"Yeah, bit too soon," said Harry, dutifully straightening his hair as much as it would go (not much—he'd definitely use that "Hero of the Wizarding World" business to get his free haircut this weekend), and taking the mug from her hand. "I'm going to tell my mind healer on you."

"Do it!" laughed Hermione, walking Harry to her door and opening it for him. "Merlin knows I could use a break from the Sexual Release is Not Necessarily Emotionally Healing lectures."

"Oh, Hermione, gross!"

"And," Hermione added quietly, with a glint in her eye that thrilled Harry to see, for he'd thought it killed in the War, "If you really make me mad, I might get her to give that same lecture to YOU," and she shut the door behind him.

One month ago he wouldn't have believed it if you'd paid him to, but Harry found himself feeling what was definitely happiness. No doubt. Absolute moment of gratitude for you right there.

Harry carried the mug back to Draco's door, entered without bothering to knock, and felt his heart catch at the sweetest, most pathetic sight that lay before him: Draco, still in the faded Muggle jeans and worn-looking Muggle T-shirt (must remember to ask him what was up with all the Muggle clothes) that he'd worn last night, lying flat on his back on the bed, perfectly still in that way that you only lie if you're hoping beyond hope that if you only lie still enough then maybe, just maybe, you won't vomit.

"Aww, here, you," Harry said soothingly as he approached Draco and sat down next to him on the bed so carefully that it wouldn't shift under his weight and undo all of Draco's must-not-vomit willpower. "If you can sit up even a little, I'll give you some of Hermione's secret hangover potion. I swear it will make you feel 100% better."

Draco gave the tiniest of must-not-vomit nods, and painstakingly began to lift himself up. Smoothly, Harry shifted so that he was sitting adjacent to Draco's head, then he eased up Draco's upper body very carefully so as not to jostle him, shifted him over so that he was lying back against Harry's chest, and put the mug of hangover potion into his hand. Draco held it very still for several seconds, and Harry wondered if he was about to be awarded with a lapful of puke, but then he drank, first a small sip, then, tentatively, a little larger one, then another mouthful, and then he drained the cup.

"I think I'm in love with Hermione," Draco announced.

"Brightest witch of her age!" said Harry cheerfully, settling himself a little more comfortably with Draco still against his chest, all his sarcastic inner personas high-fiving each other in jubilation. "Fred and—aww, fuck. George, I mean. George is always after her to patent that hangover potion, and I think she should, too, but she'll show you how to make it anytime you want. She showed me once, but I'm still crap at it."

"You, crap at potions? So surprising," said Draco, sitting up (damndamnDAMN!) and turning to face Harry on the bed. "I was sorry to hear that Fred had died in the Battle. He and George teased me, but it was impossible not to like them. When they dropped out of school and ran away on their broomsticks, just ditched all the chaos? Well, it was the coolest thing that I'd ever seen. I fantasized about doing the same thing, oh, a thousand times, but where would I have fucking gone, you know?"

"I…" said Harry, swallowing, then looking down at his lap where he wished that Draco still was. "Okay, I don't really want to talk about this, and I don't know why I'm bringing it the fuck up right now, but Dumbledore could have hidden you and your mum like he said he could. You could have let him help you."

"I will ask how you know about that another time," Draco said, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt—didn't he know that would just cause it to unravel more?—"but I did not trust Dumbledore. I know you loved him, and I know he was a good man, but I just flat-out did not trust him."

"Why not?"

"Well, because of what he always did to you every year. You fought that Quirrell brain thing, and a basilisk, and you can't tell me that he couldn't have gotten you out of the Triwizard Tournament if he'd really wanted to, and, I don't know, it seemed to me like he had his own agenda."

"Unlike your father or, I don't know, Voldemort?!" Harry retorted, then immediately said, "Actually, no, forget I said that. It was stupid, okay? I don't want to fight about it, and also… I hate to say it, because I did love him very much, but you're right, okay? Yes, Dumbledore did have his own agenda, and yes, it was a totally inappropriate agenda for a child, and yes, that's one of the many reasons why I am so very fucked up. But it's also why we're all not slaves to Voldemort right now, and for what it's worth, I think Dumbledore was being sincere when he offered you sanctuary, although yeah… probably too little, too late, huh?"

"Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you aware that you're crying?" Draco's voice was gentle, and he looked concerned, not at all seeming to be interested in their fight.

Harry felt his face, and fuck, Draco was right. "Goddamnit!" he shouted, so angry at himself. He pulled his knees up to his chest and hid his face against them, feeling so embarrassed, so stupid. Why the hell would he think that he was actually okay for one second? He was clearly never going to be okay again, much less happy. That probably wasn't even happiness that he felt in the hall earlier—maybe it was hunger, or... horniness, maybe. Maybe he should just drop out, hole up in Grimmauld Place, live off his War reparations, let Kreacher—

And then he felt Draco's hand. It was carding through his hair—his stupid, too long hair—gently, and as Harry held his breath and waited, definitely not crying now, he could hear Draco's bed squeak and dip as Draco leaned forward onto his knees, and then Draco's other hand was also in Harry's hair, and Draco laid his cheek down so that it rested there, too.

"I think it's going to be okay," Draco said quietly.

Harry was about to respond, was going to open his mouth and find himself saying something so cool that Draco would absolutely kiss him, but just then Harry's stomach gave the loudest, most obnoxious, most disgustingly awful growl that he had ever heard any body part make. Even in the Forest, when all they were eating was rice from a giant bag in Hermione's purse and still they never could fucking figure out how not to scorch it, Harry's stomach had never made such a godawful sound.

Draco bellowed with laughter. He sat up (damnit!), then fell over backwards, still laughing, then curled into a fetal position and clutched his stomach in pain, still laughing so hard that even as totally embarrassed as Harry was, it made him want to laugh, too, to see it. "Oh, Merlin!" he shouted between laughs. "Oh, my stomach! Oh, fucking Merlin, that was the worst thing that I have ever heard!"

"Yes, yes," said Harry patiently, trying to look unimpressed but his own face hurting thanks to his own unaccustomed smile.

Finally Draco petered out, a couple of last giggles escaping. He got to his feet, straightened his Muggle clothes, then held out a hand to Harry. "Come on, you. We obviously need to feed you before your stomach makes that frightening noise at me again."

Harry took Draco's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet, and he kept that hand all the way down to the Great Hall for breakfast. Harry saw Hermione poke Ron and point them out as they walked in, and he smiled even bigger as he mentally prepared himself for the "It's Okay to be Gay" speech that was apparently coming his way very soon.

And Ron ate a real breakfast, eggs and toast and tomatoes and everything. Harry couldn't wait to hear this speech.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. I also think they're real.

The "It's Okay to be Gay" speech would have to wait, of course, because right after breakfast, everyone split up. All combatants were required to meet in person with their mind healers weekly, and pretty much all of those meetings for the Hogwarts students were to take place on the weekends. Hermione and Ron both had Sunday appointments, so they planned to head back to Hermione's room to "hang out" ("Gross, Hermione!" Harry whispered in her ear, and she smacked him on the back of the head), but Draco's appointment was to take place almost immediately up in one of the fourth-floor offices. Harry's was later, but was also in Hogsmeade (his mind healer was cool like that), so he figured he might as well leave, too, and maybe he'd just amble. Buy himself a quill as a reward for studying so hard. Buy Draco a present, maybe.

Merlin, he was going to have to tell his mind healer the actual truth about Draco. If she did give him one of those sex lectures that Hermione talked about, he was seriously going to be the Boy Who Lived Twice and Then Died of Embarrassment.

"Hey, Harry," said Draco, as he packed up to head out (Draco hoarded food, too. Harry figured that just being a Death Eater didn't guarantee good times during the War, especially if Voldemort was squatting in your house), "Want to meet up somewhere later? I don't think I've been outside this castle all week."

"Hell, yeah!" Harry said. "Do you know that hill right at the Forbidden Forest? It's where you used to spy on my Quidditch practices."

"Only to watch you suck, Potty." And sweet fucking Merlin, Draco laughed again. That laugh was quickly becoming addictive. "I'll just bring my books and hang out there after my session."

"Yeah, I'll meet you there after mine." Harry was… happy.

That happiness lasted only until his mind healing session began, of COURSE. Stupid mind healer. Stupid perceptive mind healer. Stupid making him talk about things he didn't want to talk about mind healer. Stupid giving him advice and telling him what to do mind healer.

The mind healer was proud of his Moments of Gratitude, yes, and of his Healthy Choices, and of his Reaching out to Others, and of his Talking about the War with Fellow Combatants, and she flat-out giggled in excitement when he told her the real truth about how he felt about Draco, but oh, fuck, she DID give him the Sexual Release is Not the Same as Emotional Healing lecture, AND they had to talk for a really long time about his sexuality, and when Harry told her about the crying without knowing it again, and maybe a couple of teeny-tiny little flashbacks that didn't hurt anyone this past week, she was the opposite of pleased and unconcerned. She said that it was fine for this week, but next week they were really going to have to start talking about Harry's actions in the War in much more detail, in order to help him "release." Release what, Harry was unclear about, but he'd be damned if he was going to tell her about some of that War stuff. About pissing himself, and about just running past that Hufflepuff kid getting eaten by a werewolf, and about how the fire was alive, he knew it—just… no. Not going to talk about it. He'd ask for some more sex lectures, instead.

Harry felt awful after his session. He always did, though, always felt sad and wrung-out and tired, even after eating the big bar of chocolate that he got at the end (which always unpleasantly reminded him of the single time that the Dursleys had taken him to the doctor. Mental note to ask if wizards needed jabs, because he sure as hell hadn't gotten many as a Muggle).

Tearing his mind away from the session, Harry decided that he just wouldn't think about it anymore today—after all, he had a date to plan (And it was definitely a date, no matter what Draco had been thinking. One advantage to secretly creeping on your mate for a month is that you were always prepared for an impromptu date when the opportunity presented itself)! Harry stopped into the Hog's Head and got two big takeaways of fish and chips and a six-pack of butterbeer, got the bartender to set a warming charm for him (he was really having to kill himself for this fucking Charms NEWT), and tried to make himself calm down and feel better on the walk back. He wanted to be happy to meet Draco in a few minutes, not feel like an emotionally disabled War veteran.

By the time Harry reached the grounds of Hogwarts, he was feeling a little better, thank Merlin. His mind healer had reminded him again that forcing himself not to think of his experiences was not productive, but fuck her, because it helped. Unfortunately, when Harry got to the top of the hill, Draco wasn't there. Did Harry take too long and so he'd left? They hadn't exactly made plans to eat lunch together—had he gone inside? But then Harry noticed their transfiguration textbook lying open a few feet away, at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, a few ripped pages whipping in the wind.

And… there were voices. They were coming from the Forest.

Gently, silently, Harry set down his bag of takeaway. Silently, he pulled his wand, and ran on silent feet into the Forest. The Forest was still fairly open here, and there was a clearing just a few dozen feet inside. Silently, Harry darted behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, got low, and peeked around it to see what needed to be done.

He didn't understand what he was looking at, at first. Just a group of fifth- and sixth-year kids, it looked like, standing in a semicircle. They were yelling stuff, but it was all so muddled that Harry couldn't make anything out. They had their wands out, though, and they were all looking up. Were they practicing something? What was—

Oh. Fuck. NO!

The kids had levitated Draco—how they'd gotten him, Harry didn't know, but he doubted that Draco would raise his wand even to save his own life, these days. He hung there, upside-down (like a punch to the gut, Harry realized that he knew this spell. Knew this entire scene. Oh, fucking Merlin, what was the point of anything?), while the children below shouted at him. Some were throwing clumps of dirt at him.

In Harry's head, everything suddenly got very, very quiet. Every Sarcastic Inner Voice was in agreement, it seemed. Outside Harry's head, everything also got very, very quiet, as he made everyone's voices stop. He stood up and stalked over to the spot under which Draco hung, silently, calmly, his eyes fixed on Draco, who had finally seen him, and whose eyes that should have held relief seemed to still only hold that same look of concern from before.

When Harry reached the place directly underneath Draco, he made that childish spell dissolve so that Draco fell back to the earth, and Harry caught him in his arms. Draco was heavy, but Harry wasn't a soldier for nothing. He'd run Draco back to the medics (mustn't Apparate in such crowded conditions), leave him there behind the shields, and then come back and deal with these Death Eaters himself. Or he'd do it now. He knew a curse that would incapacitate them just fine, and if another Death Eater happened upon them while they were dying from it, then that would be—

"HARRY! HARRY!" It sounded as if Draco had been yelling for a while, but his voice only then penetrated Harry's thoughts. Harry looked down at Draco's face—he better not be asking to be put down, because that was not a possibility; he could have a fracture, or internal bleeding. Maybe he could find Hermione to check him out, or Madam Pomfrey if she—"Harry, hey," came Draco's voice again, much more gently this time, and this time it really penetrated.

"Are you alright?" Harry asked. "I'm about to take you to the medics. You're gonna be just fine."

"Harry, I'm already fine. The War is long over. Voldemort is dead. We're at school now—remember Eighth Year?"

"Oh, fuck, right." Harry shook his head to try to clear it, but he still didn't put Draco down, because it did sound right, what Draco was saying, but… he didn't know. He didn't feel right.

"Harry, I want you to let them down now," said Draco. Harry looked up then, past Draco's body that he held, and at first he didn't see the students who'd been tormenting Draco—had they ran away?—but then he thought about exactly what Draco had said and he looked up, and there they were.

Harry had wandlessly, without using a spell, silenced the students and levitated them all, exactly as they'd levitated Draco. He could see their mouths opening and closing in silent screams and sobs, see their arms and legs flailing, see the abject terror on all their young faces. He was horrified. He…

He was a monster.

Harry made all the students come down—gently, of course, fucking Merlin it was the least he could do—and he made them have their voices back; no point trying to keep the extent of his power secret anymore, even if it did frighten them further. They ran, of course, because who doesn't run from a monster, and Harry figured it probably wouldn't be long until the Aurors came for him. He was going straight past In-House Therapy, he suspected, and right into Azkaban. He needed to be there, too, if he couldn't stop himself from torturing a bunch of kids.

Harry fell to his knees, and buried his head in Draco's chest. He should put him down, he knew. Let him run away, too. Draco was saying something, had been speaking to him the entire time, but Harry didn't want to let himself listen. It was creeping in, though—his ear was right next to Draco's mouth, and Draco was saying…

"Thank you, Harry. Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you. It'll be okay." Harry did turn his face to the side and look at Draco, then, wondering if it was another trick, if maybe Draco was too afraid to yell at him and was just comforting him until he could get away.

But no, Draco's eyes looked sincere. Still concerned, yes, but not frightened. "What the hell," Harry thought, took a deep, regretful breath, and set Draco back on the ground. His shoulders were aching, anyway.

Immediately, Draco got up onto his knees facing Harry, and took Harry's face into his hands. He looked at Harry for a few long seconds, and Harry looked back at him, searchingly, not understanding what was happening. Were the Aurors coming? Was Draco about to Stun him?

And then achingly slowly, impossibly gently, as if he was giving Harry all the time in the world to back away, Draco leaned forward and kissed him.

Harry knew that he'd had trouble with kissing before, had trouble turning his brain off, but this kiss with Draco… it was different. It was everything. Time stopped, his brain stopped, the War stopped, and all he had left, all he needed, was Draco.

When Draco finally pulled back (Draco would have to, because Harry knew that he would never, ever, EVER stop kissing Draco if it was up to him to do), Harry's head was completely, miraculously clear. He snuck one hand back around to the nape of Draco's neck and pulled him close again for one quick second, then got to his feet, helped Draco gather his broken and torn things, and took him by the hand.

"We've got to go tell Headmistress McGonagall what happened to you, and what I did," Harry said, resigned to what must come next.

At the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Harry snagged his bag of takeaway, still warm and wonderful-smelling. Whatever happened, he hoped that he at least had time to eat with Draco before they took him away.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or his world. It's important to me that you know that, because I'm a Ravenclaw and we like people to know things.

Oddly, everything was normal in the castle. Harry had honestly expected a team of Aurors to meet him at the entrance, and for the entire rest of the school to be in their common rooms under lockdown, but everything… was normal. Gossiping groups of kids, students studying alone or with a friend, one little first-year Hufflepuff playing with her cat who looked up as they passed and said, "Hello, Harry Potter!"—it was your typical Saturday at Hogwarts.

There was no password to Headmistress McGonagall's office, and she had even charmed the stairs to carry you up—she said all that stair climbing was too much for her at her age, and no sense making everyone else do it if she planned on always getting a ride. Harry and Draco rode up standing on the same stair, the bag of takeaway in Harry's hand, the dirty knapsack crammed with torn books, broken quills, and spilled ink in Draco's. Even though he was sure that he was going to be incarcerated from here, Harry felt steady and calm.

"I wasn't a soldier for nothing if I can't handle this," he thought to himself, then he let go of Draco's hand and knocked at the door.

"Come in!" called Headmistress McGonagall's distinctive voice. She looked up as Harry and Draco entered, her face first brightening with pleasure at seeing them, but then falling immediately afterwards. She pushed back her chair and was in front of the two in seconds.

"What happened?" She asked.

"Minerva, I…" began Harry, and then, to his horror, his composure completely collapsed and he began to weep. Fucking Merlin fuck FUCK! So much for being that calm, cool, collected soldier! He killed Voldemort when he was a kid, and now he couldn't even stop crying in his teacher's office. He dropped his bag of stupid takeaway from when he stupidly thought that he'd get the chance to be happy for, like a minute, and turned to go. He'd just take himself to the Ministry and ask for In-House Therapy; it would probably go easier for him that way.

"Harry, what the hell!" exclaimed Draco as Harry pulled away. He reached out for him again, and snagged Harry's arm, and no matter what Harry thought about himself, no matter what he felt, he could not tear himself away from Draco a second time. He let Draco pull him back to his side, let Draco turn him into the shelter of his body, let Draco pull his head down so that Harry could finally, thankfully cry into the safety of Draco's shoulder.

When Harry's angry, ashamed sobs eventually began to peter out, he could hear that Draco was in the middle of telling Minerva their story. He quieted, but didn't move from Draco's embrace as Draco told Headmistress McGonagall of running from the students ("It was my first reaction, Minerva. I always knew myself to be a coward, but honestly, running from a bunch of fifteen-year-olds?" "Draco, what else were you supposed to have done? Avoiding violence is something to be proud of"), of being caught by the Leg-Snare Curse, of holding as still as he could and letting them yell at him and throw things at him and rip his belongings, until—

"And then Harry came, Minerva. We'd made plans to meet there on the hill, but instead he had to find me missing. I think he searched for me, and when he found me, he rescued me. He didn't hurt the children, although I know that he terrified them."

"Well, Harry, Draco, this sounds extremely upsetting, and I assure you that we will absolutely suspend the students responsible and make sure that they absolutely understand that what they did must never happen again. I'm glad that you came to tell me, but I must say... Why do I get the feeling that this encounter wasn't as straightforward as it sounds?"

"Because, Minerva," said Harry, deciding he might as well make a clean break of it in his last few minutes of freedom, go down fighting and all that, "When I rescued Draco, I thought that I was fighting in the War, and I thought that those students were Death Eaters, and I was going to kill them."

"Oh," Headmistress McGonagall said, a little breathlessly, and felt behind her for a chair to sit in. "Sit down, and let's talk about it a little more."

"Harry," the headmistress finally said, after an endlessly painful discussion in which Harry had been required to admit things that he didn't like to admit, such as exactly what he was thinking when he saw Draco (Fear. Kill the Death Eaters), and exactly how often such displays of vast magic occurred (often, and yes, both Minerva AND Draco had gasped at that. "Once a freak, always a freak," Harry thought to himself). "I know that what happened was terrifying for everyone, and I know that it's even more so because you feel that you came close to hurting fellow students. But Harry, you didn't hurt them. You didn't actually do anything wrong, or at least you did about as much as they were doing to Draco, and you weren't doing it to former combatants. Every single student here knows the guidelines for appropriate behavior towards former combatants, and every single student here knows that this applies to Draco. Those students did something extremely cruel and extremely dangerous, and Draco is going to give me his memory of the attack so that I can punish them, and then I want both of you to go back to your dormitory for the rest of the day, and try to relax. No one is going to come for you, Harry; you're completely safe."

Draco distilled his memory for Headmistress McGonagall (Harry briefly wondered if his own memory would be cogent, or would be a boiling mass of Death Eaters and snakes and injured lovers needing medics), and also gave her his knapsack—she assured him that the students' parents would be replacing all of his possessions within the day. Then Harry felt Draco take his hand, saw him grab that fucking takeaway bag, and let him lead him out the door, back down the magical stairs, and up to their dormitory, where thankfully nobody was in the common room, and they could immediately escape to Draco's room without having to explain their appearance to anybody.

"Harry," said Draco, and Harry realized that he was in a bit of a fog, but he didn't know what to do about it, or much care. "You are going to go into my bathroom and take a hot shower. My house elf is going to bring you your comfiest clothes, and when you're done you're going to come back out here and we are going to sit in a pile of cushions by the fire and finally eat this takeaway that you were so thoughtful to get us and that has been fucking tormenting me for the last two hours by smelling so delicious. I swear, even upside-down and halfway up a tree, I still smelled it before I saw you, and I thought, 'Ooh, they're going to kill me, but first they brought me fish and chips!"

A kiss was Harry's reward for smiling at that, and then he dutifully found himself in that hot shower, where the fog did begin to clear a bit from his brain. The fun of trying out all the fancy-looking potions to figure out what they were for and which one smelled the best (the lemongrass/ginger-smelling purple goop did, and hopefully it was for the hair, because that's where Harry put it) cleared a bit more fog, and by the time that Harry finally turned the water off and pulled back the shower curtain and saw that Draco's house elf had set out his grey flannel pants, a soft white T-shirt (that was actually probably Ron's, but all their clothing had gotten mixed up while on the run), and his Gryffindor Quidditch hoodie for him, with his last name and number on the back of the shirt and the little golden Snitch that had been spelled to constantly dart around, he found himself feeling almost like his old self. Not his _old _old self, mind you, but definitely like his new normal. Definitely the guy who, although he remembered that he hadn't seen this hoodie since he'd worn it that night in sixth year when he and Ron had stayed up half the night to talk about girls (Ginny and Hermione, Merlin, they were all such babies back then), he could still feel happy to see it and eager to put it on and get back to Draco.

Draco beamed when Harry reappeared, and showed him the massive nest of pillows and blankets that he'd created—had his house elf raided Malfoy Manor for some of that? "I noticed that you like the fire," Draco said, "so I thought I'd settle us here. Now," he said, sitting Harry down right in the middle, a stack of pillows at his back, "it is very important to me that you drink this hot tea, spiked only slightly with firewhiskey—for the nerves, you know—and read this issue of The Astonishing X-Men while I grab a quick shower, too."

"Do not under any circumstances," he called over his shoulder as he entered the bathroom, "eat those fish and chips without me."

Harry dutifully drank his tea ("Must remember," he thought, "Firewhiskey in SMALL amounts") and dutifully got lost in the X-Men, so much so that he looked up in happy surprise to see Draco again. Draco even had a little pink in his cheeks after his hot shower. He looked… delicious.

Draco appeared to have nothing more on his mind than their very belated lunch, however, as he immediately plopped himself down on the blankets facing Harry and dished out their food. He even knew a Frosting Charm for their butterbeers.

Harry realized that, in fact, he was ravenous, too, and both he and Draco ate steadily until there wasn't much left on their plates but salt grains and a few crumbs. Draco set his dish aside, then reached out and did the same for Harry's. Then he leaned forward, his nose almost touching Harry's, and smiled—well, Harry was too close to actually see Draco smile, but he could see his smiling eyes looking into his own. He felt ashamed, for a second, to have let himself be so coddled by someone who had really been the real victim in all of this, but then that shame was washed away by the affection that he felt for someone who would not let himself feel victimized, and would not let Harry feel victimized, either, and so before Draco could do it, Harry, himself, closed the short distance between them and kissed him.

Draco tasted of salt, vinegar, and butterbeer, and Harry found it intoxicating. He certainly wasn't having trouble turning his brain off this time—all it seemed to be saying to him were helpful iterations of "More!" and "All the kissing!" and "Get him over here!"

"That's good advice for a change," was Harry's last coherent thought, and he hitched onto Draco's hipbones (oh, and they were wonderful hipbones, weren't they?) and hauled him, still kissing him, off his knees and sprawled him across his body.

Good thing for all the pillows. Draco was VERY smart.

Having Draco sprawled off-balance across him was an excellent way to kiss. That way, Harry was able to reach all the wonderful places that he thought about licking, such as just under Draco's jaw and in the hollow of his neck, and all the even more wonderful places that there were to nibble—Draco's earlobes, and his chin. Harry's hands, too, had free access to explore Draco's body, the planes and hollows of his muscular back (with many ridges and puckers of scars, too, that Harry decided he would get the stories for and mete out the vengeance for later), and his chest, its erect nipples that caused Draco to gasp into Harry's mouth when he first rubbed them with the pad of his thumb (that must be done again, and often).

Rubbing Draco's nipples and hearing him gasp and feeling him writhe above him, Harry then had probably the greatest revelation of his life: he sat up with Draco in his lap, drew his hands down Draco's front to the hem of his soft shirt, and pulled the shirt over Draco's head in one sharp, violent motion. Draco gazed at him with glazed eyes and mouth wet, grinning sexily at Harry, his arms caught up in the short sleeves of his shirt. Harry tore Draco's shirt away and threw it aside, and then he had all that pale, beautiful skin in front of him.

Best. Idea. Ever. He'd bake cookies for this idea, if he could. Hell, he'd bake cookies for Draco and then eat them off his chest.

Speaking of Draco's chest… now Harry could get his mouth on it. And oh, bloody hell—if Draco gasped when Harry touched his nipples, he flat-out moaned when Harry licked them.

"Fuck, Harry," Draco moaned. He roughly grabbed Harry's head and drew his face up to him, kissed him sloppily and hungrily, then pulled Harry's own sweatshirt off.

"Fucking Merlin, Harry, more clothes?!" He groaned, when he saw just another shirt (Ron's shirt—oops!) underneath.

"Well, you said that you wanted me to be comfy," Harry replied.

"You know what would be more comfy? Fewer clothes," said Draco, and pulled off Harry's T-shirt, too. Harry suddenly felt painfully shy—his torso was awful, just wrecked with scars and burns—so he pulled Draco to him, and their bare chests together? Okay, THIS was the best idea ever.

Except… Draco was trembling.

"Hey," Harry said, and pushed Draco's chin up so that he had to look at him. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Draco said. "It's just… I've wanted this—I mean, not, like _this_ this, because that would have been very disturbing as a kid—but I've wanted _you_ since I was eleven fucking years old. I never thought that I would deserve you."

"Deserve ME?" said Harry. "Damn, Draco, you deserve everything. You're… damn it, you can even get me talking about feelings. You're everything, you asshole, everything good, everything I want. Merlin, I have got to hook you up with some of the Gryffindors soon, and let them tell you. It's been, like, a running joke in the boys' dorm for four years now that I'm your gay psycho stalker. I once was trying to tell all my buddies how much I hated you back when we were fourteen, but instead I got off on this tangent about how you looked in your Quidditch uniform, and I got a huge boner right in front of everyone. Dean gave me a giant poster of you for Christmas that year. Merlin, everyone knew."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Draco shouted with laughter, practically falling off of Harry's lap. "That was the year that I tried to have sex with Pansy, but right as we were just about to do it I started crying instead and told her all about how much I loved you, and then I had to Obliviate her. She forgot the whole week and failed her Herbology exam. Oh, it was bad."

Harry would simply not let himself feel grief for all those years that they could have had together but didn't, just because of a couple of awkward encounters between two vulnerable, ignorant, arrogant little boys.

"Hey," he said, leaning his forehead against Draco's, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him close. "I'm sorry I didn't take your hand on the train that first year. Ron was my only friend then."

"Long forgotten, asshole," said Draco, and tilted his head down to kiss him some more.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Harry and Draco do not belong to me. I just like to mash them together and make them kiss!

Harry had just experienced his next Greatest Revelation, that of wouldn't it be so excellent to perhaps get his hands inside Draco's pants, when Draco stilled and said, "There's someone at the door."

"Are they dismantling the wards?" Harry asked, instantly alert. He shifted Draco into the embrace of only one arm so that he could begin feeling around for his wand with the other. Why the fuck hadn't he kept his wand close? How many fucking times did Moody have to tell him this?

"It's okay, Harry," said Draco, uncurling from Harry's lap and getting to his feet, "They're just knocking."

"Good wards you've got. I can't hear a thing."

"Well," admitted Draco, "I added a Silencio for inside and out, just in case."

"Smart man."

Harry understood that clearly Draco wasn't worried, but nevertheless, when Draco opened his door, Harry had placed himself just behind him, within reach of Draco in case he needed to pull him back, but with plenty of wand-room for Defensive spells.

"See, Mad-Eye?" thought Harry. "I can be taught. Mostly."

But when Draco opened, the door, it was only Ron. A frantic Ron, but only Ron. "Dude," he said, "Is Harry—oh, wait. Hi, Harry. Whoah. Listen, Hermione's… she's not doing good, and I can't—I can't fucking calm her down. She needs you."

Immediately, Harry pushed past Draco, but snagged his hand on the way to drag him after him. Together, followed closely by Ron, they ran down the hallway and in through Hermione's open door, and where it became clear that Ron had also utilized a Two-Way Silencio ("Smart man," Harry thought again), because Hermione was screaming. She'd backed herself into a corner, with the debris all around her of possessions that she must have thrown around, and her screaming was hoarse, but it didn't stop for longer than it took for her to take a breath. Harry didn't understand what he was looking at, or why Hermione was screaming, until he saw the blood.

Hermione was cutting herself. Harry didn't really understand that, either—Hermione was brave, but he knew that she secretly dreaded pain, dreaded even the cramps that came with her period—but then he saw where the majority of her cuts—or scratches. Merlin, was she doing this with her fingernails?—were located, and of course he understood. The healers had tried so hard to smooth down the "Mudblood" written on her arm, but everyone knew that you couldn't heal curse scars.

Pretending a calmness that he absolutely did not feel, Harry said, "Dude, Hermione, what's up?"

Honestly, he didn't even expect her to be able to hear him over her own hoarse screaming, so he was shocked when she replied, "Harry, I have to get it off. I have to get. This. OFF!"

Harry walked all the way over to Hermione, took her arm in his hand, and batted away her viciously scratching nails. He held her arm safe while he wiped the sweaty, wild hair back from her face, then said quietly to her, "You know it's not coming off. You and I, we're lifetime members of the Words Carved into our Skin Club, yeah?"

Hermione gave up then, gave up into deep sobs against Harry's chest while he held her close, keeping her bloody arm extended away from the two of them. He led her over to a chair next to her fireplace (seriously, everyone had a fireplace! Harry wondered if the mind healers had specified that all combatants must have a fireplace in their room, on account of sitting and staring at it made you feel like you were doing something), sat in it himself, then pulled Hermione into his lap, where she curled up, her face pressed hard against his collarbone.

Harry looked up for Ron, then, to come and heal the wounds on Hermione's arm, but Ron had turned his back to them and was leaning his head against the farthest wall, one arm over his eyes, and so Harry looked toward Draco, and although Draco looked… very confused, and very unhappy—Harry was clearly going to have to do more talking about feelings later, sigh—he came immediately over when Harry caught his eye, examined Hermione's arm with a critical eye, then said, very gently, "I'm going to heal these scratches, Hermione. It won't hurt, but it will feel cold."

Harry held Hermione in his arms, speaking quietly to her of books they'd read together under the covers on freezing nights ("Remember the Nome King? What an asshole, right?"), and the games they'd played at meal times to encourage each other to eat enough of their tedious rice dinners to stay alive ("I'm pretty sure that you still owe me Five Favors of My Choosing for those five giant spoonfuls of rice that I ate. You not doing this again, Hermione, is going to be one of my Favors, okay?"), and the day that they'd just decided to fuck the fucking War and had spent the day at the movies in an anonymous little suburb in Wales ("Did YOU know that they'd have every movie dubbed into Welsh? Because I sure didn't! And the look on that guy's face when you bought all the hot dogs and then stuffed them all into your purse!"), while Draco very carefully and very precisely healed the deep scratches on Hermione's arm. Harry knew that the technical skill required for the spell that Draco had chosen was immense; was life in Malfoy Manor along with Voldemort the reason that Draco was so skilled in healing, and so calm in an emergency? Harry hoped he'd be forgiven for this, so that he could one day ask Draco to tell him.

When Hermione's arm was healed cleanly of everything except her "Mudblood" scars, and she lay calmly in Harry's arms, he said to her, in a voice so quiet that only she and Draco could hear it, "Ron's pretty upset, Hermione, but I'm about to fall asleep where I sit. If Draco and I go back to his room and pass out, do you think that you could take care of Ron for me?"

Hermione nodded, and so although she didn't make any move to get up and go to Ron, Harry gently shifted her off of his lap and rose from the chair. He took Draco's hand again, only then noticing that neither of them had remembered to put their shirts on before leaving Draco's room. In this light, Harry could see more of Draco's terrible scarring—he guessed that there'd been more than just Hermione tortured at Malfoy Manor during the War.

Before they left, Harry put his arm around Ron's shoulders, and said into his ear, "She really, really, really needs you to go over to her now. I hear from my mind healer that Sexual Release is Emotionally Healing, or something like that."

Ron snorted, but he did turn to face Harry then, and although his eyes were red and his cheeks were wet, he gave him a grin that was almost a shadow of his old self and said, "It's Okay to be Gay, Harry. Seriously. Go back to your room and make love to the Ferret—Sorry, Malfoy—since it looks like you were halfway there already."

Harry cuffed him on the back of the head and left, taking Draco with him.

When they got back to Draco's room the piles of blankets and pillows were gone—"Damn it!" Harry said out loud—but in their place was a table, and on the table was roast beef, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and hot chocolate in a large, steaming pot. Harry and Draco filled their plates at the table, but when Draco went with his plate to his bed, and sat leaning against the headboard, Harry followed his lead.

As Harry took a bite ("Roast beef," he thought. "Perfect food to eat while you break the heart of the guy you love and he probably kicks you out of his life forever"), Draco simply said, "You and Hermione—tell me."

So, in between bites of roast beef and sips of comforting, rich hot chocolate, Harry did. He told of Dumbledore's mission ("This is what you were right about, Draco. It was hard—too hard for us. It should have been given to experienced Aurors, but by the time we realized that, Wizarding Britain was too far gone, and we'd been away from it too long. We didn't know who to trust, and we just… kept muddling"), and how they'd eventually run out of ideas, and then of resources ("We were exhausted, and we were cold. We were starving, too, definitely malnourished, but what the fuck were we supposed to do? We'd Apparate into grocery stores sometimes at night to steal supplies, but this Horcrux that we had to keep with us—I don't know, it's like it was trying to get us caught. It was dangerous to go outside our wards"), and of Ron leaving ("He just left us. Just… left. Like, we were doing so badly with him, but what the fuck were we supposed to do without him? He KNEW that if Voldemort won, Hermione would be executed as a Mudblood and I—well, you probably know better than I do all the things that Voldemort wanted to do to The Boy Who Lived. And still, he left us"), and, finally, to the best that he could explain it, what he and Hermione were to each other.

"So yes, we were lovers for a while, alone in that filthy tent with our rice and the radio and a Horcrux for company, but that's not what we are, really. And Ron knows that, too, it's just… just hard for him, because he's the one who left us. But, Hermione? She's never left me. When she thought that I was crazy? She stayed with me. When she thought that I was wrong? She stayed with me. She fucking Obliviated her own parents for me, Draco, just erased herself from their lives—for me. She would have starved with me, would have lived in the fucking Forest forever with me-she even volunteered to go with me when I sacrificed myself to Voldemort, did you know that? Fuck, I'm not explaining this right, but she's a friend, okay? Like, not a normal friend, and even best friend doesn't really explain it; there's not actually a word for the friendship that we have. She's like, my symbiotic friend, I guess, my unconditional friend, my friend who I can rely on absolutely, no matter what.

And I'm hers."

Harry sat for a minute, his empty plate in his hands, and waited for Draco to tell him to get out, or to tell him to choose, or to tell him that he couldn't accept this, but all Draco did was turn to him and say, "Okay."

Harry felt relieved suddenly, and also terribly exhausted—the weight of that unconscious worry over telling Draco about Hermione had been at least as heavy as his worry over Aurors coming to take him away earlier that day.

Fucking Merlin, it HAD been a long day!

Harry took Draco's plate from him, and carried it with his own back to the table. He returned to the bed, tugged Draco off of it, then pulled the covers down and fluffed the pillows. He let Draco climb into bed on the other side from him, but as soon as he was settled, he gathered Draco to him and snugged him in with his head on Harry's shoulder and Harry's arms around him. He idly stroked Draco's soft, short hair, feeling Draco's breaths slow down and even out as they puffed over his chest. Harry fell asleep that way, feeling exhausted, yes, sad, always, but also content.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: The characters and the world aren't mine; I just live there in my head.

Harry woke alone the next morning, but heard Draco's shower going behind his closed bathroom door, so he left him a note ("Went to shower in my own crappy room. Common room later? Breakfast? Cinnamon rolls!") and padded barefoot down the hall to his own room. As he passed Hermione's room, Ron emerged, also barefoot and carrying his shoes.

"Walk of Shame, Dude," Harry intoned to him solemnly.

"Room to talk, Harry," Ron replied. "I see you managed to put on a shirt this morning."

"Got to hide all the scratches down my back," Harry replied cheerfully, and dismantled his wards and went into his room as Ron spluttered behind him.

Hmmm… maybe by tomorrow morning he'd have scratches for real. During his shower, he must consider how to accomplish this.

Of course, that made showering take MUCH longer, and by the time Harry had finished and dressed again and packed his knapsack with books (and extra supplies for Draco, just in case), Draco appeared well-settled into his spot on one of the couches in the Common Room, deep in discussion with Neville.

"Hullo, Harry!" said Neville, as Harry sat down against the arm of the couch and put his legs up on Draco's lap. Draco gave him a welcoming smile before returning his attention to Neville, but curled one hand over Harry's leg and began to trace distracting patterns on his calf with his long, gorgeous fingers. Draco and Neville resumed their discussion—something about plants and potions—while Harry enjoyed the warmth of Draco's body, the softness of the couch, and the comforting background noise of their discussion. His thoughts relaxed, and for a little while, he was okay.

Hallelujah, there WERE cinnamon rolls at breakfast, and while they were eating (Harry ate many, many, MANY cinnamon rolls. Even Ron ate two), Headmistress McGonagall brought a new leather satchel around to their table and handed it to Draco. She leaned down to speak into his ear, then squeezed his shoulder briefly and walked away. Draco immediately turned to speak quietly to Harry.

"Minerva says that all the students who participated in my attack have been suspended for a week, and will be required to complete an assessment with a mind healer. She made their parents buy me new stuff, and the Ministry apparently made them all donate to the Victims of War Compensation Fund."

"Are you okay with that?" Harry asked, then clarified. "I mean… are you okay?"

"I will be, " said Draco. "I used to think, back in the Manor with Voldemort, that I'd never feel safe ever again. I mean, there he was, in my HOME, you know? I could put up wards around my very bed and still wake up being Crucio'd at two in the morning. But now, even after all that, I keep feeling like life is just… better, I guess. Voldemort is dead. My father is in Azkaban. The guy I've liked for practically half my life likes me back. Hell, I even got my old wand back! When those kids had me upside-down, I thought they _were_ going to fucking kill me, and even then, my exact thoughts were, 'It sucks about Harry, but other than that, it's okay.'"

What else could he do after that? Harry kissed Draco then, right there at the breakfast table in front of the entire school. Draco tasted of cinnamon and sugar, and the moment was perfect.

It should have best been followed by a speedy trip right back to Draco's bedroom, in Harry's opinion, but now that Draco had gotten his school books and all his supplies replaced, he seemed to think that they should both go study right then.

"I've lost all my notes, Harry!" he whined. "Hermione can't help me right now, because she's got her session with her mind healer in a bit, and you know it's going to take forever, after all that last night business. I know your notes are probably going to be shit, but you're my only hope!"

"For your information," Harry retorted, "I have taken excellent notes so far this semester," and then, since he'd walked right into it, he had no choice but to head up to their classroom with Draco and spend the entire fucking morning studying.

"Your notes ARE shit, Harry," Draco announced a long while later.

"Yeah?" replied Harry. "Well, take a break from them, then, and come tutor me in the Potions lab."

"Do you think that you'll go into Auror training?" Draco asked later, as they gathered the supplies for the NEWT-level potion that Harry wanted to try brewing.

"I don't think I'll ever be normal enough, honestly. Will I ever be certain that I won't come to one day and find myself holding my wand against the throat of a kid who'd only been setting off fireworks?"

"Harry, your mind WILL heal. But… can I ask you something?"

Harry stopped arranging his potion supplies and turned to Draco, who was sitting perched on the work table next to Harry's cauldron. "You want to know why my magic is so vast."

"Yeah, if you want to tell me. It's just—I've seen you lose your cool before, in school. If you could have wandlessly, non-verbally Silenced me and hung me up by my ankles in fourth year, you'd have done it."

"Fuck, yeah, I would, if only to have had my way with you and then Obliviate you afterwards," joked Harry. "But fine. Yes, my magic is really vast now, and yeah, I've kind of been keeping it sort of a secret, sort of ignoring it, I guess."

"Do you know why?"

"Maybe. Okay… here's my theory-well, it's actually mostly Hermione's, because I'm really stupid at this stuff, but it sounds right to me. I don't know, though—you're really smart, too; maybe you can tell me if it makes sense. You know that I did die in the Forest that night, right? I died, and then I came back, and your mum saved my life again."

"Yes."

"So when I died, I went to… well, in my head it was the train station, Platform 9 ¾, and Dumbledore was there, and so was this nasty, tiny little monster thing."

"Okay…"

"That thing was Voldemort. It was all that was left of him, this nasty, monstrous little… thing. That's all that was left of him because all the rest of him, he'd hidden away in Horcruxes. He'd cut off every other part of him, good and bad, and hidden it, and one of the places that he'd hidden it was inside me, right?"

"Oh, Merlin, Harry…"

"I know, I know, I might need to go throw up in a minute but let's move on right now. When I died, that part of Voldemort that was living inside me was released. I know that happened, because that's what happened with all the other Horcruxes. But what I'm just guessing at, because I felt it happening as we fought, is that when we fought, the hole inside me where part of Voldemort's soul used to be felt Voldemort, and tried to get him back, but he didn't have anymore soul left to split, so the empty space took whatever else it could get away from him, which was what he was throwing at me at the time."

"His magic."

"Yep. That's our theory, at least. As he and I fought, I just kept feeling myself growing more and more powerful, and his attacks against me were growing weaker and weaker. They were so pitiful after a while that I just… killed him. Um, are you grossed out?"

Draco grinned, snagged hold of Harry's shirt collar, and tugged him over to stand between his legs. "Yep, that's me! Give me the hottest, bravest, most interesting guy in all the Wizarding World, and I'm in love. Tell me that he's also the most powerful wizard in the world, and I then go, 'Ew!'"

"I love you, too," Harry said, and kissed him.

Fifteen minutes later, Harry was panting into Draco's mouth, and insisting breathlessly, "We cannot have sex in the Potions Studio!"

"Oh, but please! It's my favorite place!"

"No! Or…. wait, no! Absolutely not! Wait—okay!"

But sighing, Draco pulled back. "No, you're right. With our luck, a first-year will walk in, and I do NOT want to end up in Azkaban for an Indecent Behavior in Company of Child charge. Let's clean up and go to my room."

"What, you're suggesting that we NOT finish a potion that we've started?"

"Why? You're suggesting that we DO?"

"Nope, not at all! Just getting your response on record, is all." And with that, Harry smacked Draco's butt and then ran out of the Potions Studio, daring him to chase him.

It did turn into a race to get back to their dormitory, and as Harry might have expected, Draco cheated. He hip-checked Harry through an open door in the hallway, then quickly Warded it against him and sprinted on while Harry broke the wards. When Harry did so almost immediately (vast power, yay!) and had almost caught up again, Draco began to blindly throw Stinging Hexes out behind him as he ran.

"Watch out, Draco! First-year!" Harry screamed, and Draco stopped in his tracks and whipped around, horrified, only to have Harry blow past him, laughing.

The two engaged in a brief shoving match to see who'd get through the hidden door to their Common Room first (Harry won), and then raced past the room and down the hall, ignoring any eighth-years who might be staring at them. Draco touched his door a fraction of a second before Harry, then dismantled his Wards while Harry stood, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

"Bit out of shape, Potty?" Draco asked cheekily as he opened his door.

"That's it, you," said Harry, and leaped against Draco, fisting his shirt collar with one hand and manhandling him through the door, then slamming it behind them and throwing Draco against it, immediately throwing himself against him and kissing him hungrily.

Draco tried to take control of their kiss, tried to steer Harry over to the bed, but Harry felt like he had lost his mind, and had definitely lost all control. He couldn't be stopped; he _wouldn't_ be stopped this time. He sucked a line of bruises down Draco's throat while Draco gasped and writhed against him, then backed away from Draco only long enough to muscle both of their shirts off before throwing himself at him again and rubbing their chests together while he kissed him again.

Draco's hands pulled at Harry's hair painfully, as if he couldn't help himself. It drove Harry crazy with lust. He suddenly had that brilliant revelation again—hands! Pants!—and fumbled with the fastenings to Draco's khakis until they fell to his ankles. He shoved Draco's pants down after them, and suddenly there was much, much, much more skin to explore.

Harry palmed Draco's cock, then reached around to squeeze his ass cheeks, then came back to squeeze his cock again, all while devouring Draco's mouth with his own. Draco briefly pulled away, and tried to work his hands down far enough to reach the fastenings of Harry's jeans, too, but Harry was having none of it.

"Harry, please! Let me—" Draco gasped breathlessly.

Harry pressed his forehead against Draco's for a second and tried to clear his head, but it wouldn't go. "I need—Draco, please. I've got to have you—I can't handle—just—please?" he finally sighed against Draco's mouth.

"Okay," Draco breathed, and stopped fighting for the upper hand. Harry immediately dropped to his knees and took Draco's cock into his mouth as far as he could. Draco bucked against him, then stopped, clearly trying to maintain some control. Harry vowed to absolutely break that control right now, and pulled his mouth off, only to lick up the entire length of Draco's cock.

"Fucking Merlin, Harry!" Draco groaned, and his hands started pulling at Harry's hair again. "Just…oh, fucking hell! You, too, though, okay? Fucking HELL, Harry! You, too!"

"Fine, fine," agreed Harry, fumbling at the button and zipper of his jeans with one hand as he pumped Draco's cock in his other, exploring the head of it with his mouth and tongue. He then moistened his hand with what was likely a combination of sweat, spit, and pre-cum, and began to stroke his own cock and suck Draco's at the same tempo.

It was intoxicating. It was incredible. It was better than treacle tart, better than Quidditch. Fuck, this was better than finding out that he was a fucking wizard! For the rest of his life, Harry was positive that anybody who ever asked him what his favorite pastime was would immediately receive the answer, "Blow job. Draco."

Draco's cries became louder and more broken, and his hips finally lost all that hard-fought self-control and began to shove wildly against Harry's face. Harry thrilled to the feeling, and when Draco finally screamed and released into Harry's mouth, Harry swallowed, spared a bit to wet his other hand, and then finished jerking himself off with Draco's cum as lubricant.

Draco began to slide down the door to Harry, but Harry instead put a hand up against Draco's chest to brace him, saying, "Nope, nope, not here!" He got to his feet, fought a brief spell of dizziness that came from having absolutely zero blood flowing to his brain for the last several minutes, then stepped on Draco's puddled khakis so that Draco could more easily step out of them and his shoes, and dragged him by the hand over to his bed, where they both collapsed.

"That was… awesome," said Draco after a while.

Harry, whose eyes were already closed, mumbled, "… so awesome…", reached out blindly to pull Draco into his side, and promptly fell asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Not mine [insert weary sigh].

Harry woke up a couple of hours later, according to the timekeeper on Draco's nightstand. Draco was still sound asleep, tucked into him, and Harry watched him for a few minutes, smiling without being able to help himself—Merlin, how long had it been before Draco since Harry had simply smiled? He was never going to let this wonderful man go.

The stickiness of Harry's hands and his lower half eventually worked their way to the forefront of his brain, however, and gently, Harry eased himself out of Draco's grasp and into the bathroom, shed his clothes into the hamper (the house elves could wash his clothes just as easily from Draco's hamper as from his own, surely?), and stepped into the shower, turning the water up nice and hot.

The hot water was perfect for easing the tension in his neck and shoulders caused by awkward angles during blow jobs and naps, and Draco's—again, Harry hoped it was shampoo—smelled refreshing, woke him up, and made his scalp tingle.

Tingling scalp, eh? Hmmm… Harry was just beginning to seriously consider reminiscing about the events of a couple of hours ago with the help of that tingling… stuff, when the glass door opened and shut behind him and Draco wrapped cold arms around his waist from behind.

"Holy fucking hell, you're freezing!" Harry barked in surprise.

"Warm me up, then," said Draco, and turned Harry around to kiss him under the water.

Although Draco had been an excellent sport during their previous encounter, and Harry was quite sure that he'd made the willing submission worth his while, Draco was making it absolutely clear that this time he was in charge. He took control of their kiss, then licked a long line down from Harry's jaw to his chest, where he took his time tonguing first one nipple, then the other. Harry threw his head back and clutched at Draco's short, soft hair with one hand while he kneaded Draco's strong shoulders with the other.

Draco wrapped his hand around Harry's cock and gave it a couple of pumps, but before Harry could react with more than a groan and a buck, Draco had turned him around so that he was leaning against one wall of the shower and pressed himself against his back, the shower water streaming down onto both of them.

Harry braced his arms against the shower wall and let his head rest on them while Draco kissed his back, but snaked his hands around to his front. One hand rubbed Harry's stomach and chest and played with his nipples while the other hand toyed maddeningly with his cock, running just a thumb over the head, or just a line down the underside. Harry bucked back against Draco restlessly.

Draco pulled Harry back against him, into the full stream of the water, and Harry saw him reach for the—yeah, it totally was not shampoo—and squeeze some into his hand, which he then wrapped again around Harry's cock.

"Holy fu—Draco, fucking hell!" Harry gasped. The slickness. The pressure. Draco's hand. His cock pressed between Harry's ass cheeks. The tingling. If this could only be what it was like to actually lose one's mind, Harry was all in, because he was pretty sure that he did not have a thought in his head beyond Draco inside this shower stall with him.

Draco switched hands on Harry's cock, and Harry felt Draco's dominant hand move away from him for a second, then ease back behind him, coated in more of that tingling potion, and begin to press with just a finger at Harry's entrance.

"Is this okay?" Draco rasped into Harry's ear.

"It is SO. Fucking. Okay," Harry replied as best he could, panting and breathless, trying to both thrust into Draco's fist in front of him and into his finger behind him at the same time.

"Then lean forward again," Draco said. "This is going to be awesome, too."

Fortunately, because Harry did not have a single coherent thought in his brain, Draco took charge, pumping Harry's cock and into his ass with the same rhythm. Harry felt him add a second finger, then a third, the burning mostly masked by the tingling potion. He tossed his head against the arms that he was resting them on, leaning against the shower wall, and bucked and moaned incoherently. He was totally gone.

Draco leaned forward again to speak into Harry's ear, his lips brushing Harry's earlobe. "Harry, have you ever done this before?"

"This? No. I'm pretty sure I've thought about it enough to have figured it out, though."

Draco laughed, his breath hot against Harry's earlobe. "I want you to take a deep breath, and when I tell you, just let it all out, okay?"

"Got it," Harry said, and inhaled deeply the warm steam of the shower and the scent of the tingling potion.

He felt Draco lining himself up behind him, and when Draco said, "Okay, now," Harry blew out all his breath as Draco carefully pushed inside him.

It didn't _hurt_ exactly, and Harry wanted to like it, but… he didn't know. But then Draco began to stroke him again, in time with his careful, steady thrusts, and Harry decided that yes, he could like this. And then oh, yes, he DEFINITELY liked this. And FUCK yeah, THIS was his new favorite thing. However Harry writhed, wherever he squirmed, there was sensation. Draco draped his torso over Harry's back, and Harry turned his head to the side, and then they were kissing as well, wet and messily, and with a shout straight from his diaphragm Harry screamed into Draco's open mouth and came all over the shower wall. He felt Draco stutter a couple more thrusts into him, and just when he was about to decide that the sensation had circled round again to absolutely not great, Draco shouted his own orgasm and collapsed against Harry's back.

Harry thought about sliding down the shower wall and lying down on the nice, horizontal floor, but decided that if he did so, he wouldn't get up again until the morning, so instead he turned around, took Draco into his arms, and nuzzled his head into the crook of Draco's neck. Draco tiredly rubbed his back and kissed the top of his head, then sniffed it. Harry stiffened.

"Um, Harry?" Draco asked.

"Yes?" replied Harry warily.

"Did you put lube in your hair?"

After Harry confessed, and Draco laughed so hard that he had to hold his stomach, and then Harry grabbed him and rubbed lube into his hair, too, the two washed each other, Draco explaining what each of the unlabeled potions was and what each was for ("This goes on before the shampoo, Harry, and this is the shampoo. Rinse it out, and then put this on. This is the lube; don't put it in your hair, for fuck's sake"). Harry didn't have any more spare clothes and wouldn't let Draco call his house elf—"I'm naked!" "Oh, for Merlin's sake, Harry! The house elf doesn't care what you wear! He doesn't even OWN clothes!"—so he put on a pair of Draco's sweat pants and his own T-shirt and Quidditch hoodie from the day before.

"Do you still fly, Draco? I mean, does it bother you?"

"No. Flying with you is actually an okay memory. Thinking about Vincent hurts, but I've thought about that moment when you saved me… a lot, actually. Anyway, why?"

"Want to go flying with me?"

"That, Harry James Potter, is an absolutely excellent idea."

Neville just looked at them blankly and then shook his head when they asked, Luna rubbing his back but nevertheless smiling up at them sympathetically before her watchful eyes continued roaming, but Blaise was also up for flying, as were Susan and Hannah and Seamus and Ron. Since the first time he'd played against sleek and fast Susan and Hannah on their Hufflepuff Quidditch team he'd longed to play _with_ them one day, and so they all had an excellent time, tossing practice Snitches for each other and flying races and playing tag 100 feet in the air. Leaving the action below them, Draco and Harry spiraled up to steal a kiss, watching their five friends laughing and chasing each other below, just as if they'd never fought on opposing sides of a bloody War.

"This was a good idea," said Draco.

"It was," Harry agreed, and kissed Draco again.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry or his world. Frankly, I'd rather bank on the idea that I'm part of his world, myself, and it's Rowling who owns ME.

The next few weeks passed peacefully, wrapped up in study as it was for the eighth-years. Harry found the daily hours of focused study growing easier, and the sessions with their tutors more enjoyable, as the relevant eighth-years always trooped over to their meeting places full of interested questions and eager for information. Harry wondered if real school could have ever been like this, or if it was only the special circumstance of this small group of goal-oriented War veterans that made such learning possible. Unlike all the other years Harry had experienced as a Hogwarts student, the eighth-years didn't dick around with petty drama; either they were having flashbacks or some other real shit going on, or they were in their seats, ready to learn at the appointed time.

On Halloween, lessons were halted before lunch so that the younger students, at least, could have an afternoon of celebration before the big evening feast—it was customary for the older students in each House to throw a party for the younger students during that time, and Harry remembered that day as being thrilling; the Halloween party his first year was still one of the happiest days of his life. Fred and George had turned their dormitory into a haunted house, and there were games with real prizes, and when they bobbed for apples, it turned out that a seventh-year had spelled some of the apples to chase the children when they were bobbed for. Harry remembered his tiny eleven-year-old self, collapsed and giggling in a heap on the floor as apples bobbed at him and tickled him, while the indulgent seventh-years looked on and laughed, themselves, at his happiness. Harry remembered thinking, then, "This is what it's _supposed_ to be like," and although he knew that back then, he didn't really understand what he was referring to, he knew now that he'd been thinking about childhood, and innocence, and the pleasure solidly residing in each.

All gone now, of course. All gone for a long time, now, and hardly allowed to get much of a foothold when it had been there.

All of the eighth years had been invited to their House parties this year, but it turned out that all were skipping it, and most were skipping the evening Feast as well (except for Pansy—she was dating a Slytherin seventh-year, and had effectively deserted the other eighth-years for everything other than class time). Ron and Hermione had decided to celebrate Halloween as their anniversary—the night that they became friends while fighting a troll made for happier reminiscing than the night that they kissed during the Battle of Hogwarts because they both thought that they were about to die—and so they planned to spend the afternoon out and then go out to dinner in Hogsmeade. Neville still didn't do well in crowds (and frankly hadn't been doing so well outside of crowds either, lately), so the other eighth years were planning to just hang out and then have their own feast in their Common Room out of solidarity with him. But before that, Harry had invited Draco to come with him to visit his parents' graves; this would be the first time that he'd ever been able to pay his respects on the anniversary of their deaths, and when he had brought it up with his mind healer, she had thought that it was an excellent idea.

Harry's mind healer had been thrilled with the improvement of his coping skills since he'd gotten together with Draco (Harry half wondered how much of his cracked sanity had been PTSD and how much had been unrequited love and a sexual identity crisis), and even more pleased that his unconscious outbursts of wild magic had all but abated. Harry still refused to talk to her or the professors about his magic, the fact of which drove them mental, he knew, but he resolutely stuck to the line that it was none of their business, and anyway Draco, who, Merlin knows, was the height of self-control, was helping him master it himself. Currently, Draco was helping Harry learn to walk the fine line between using what Harry called his "real" magic in school (because what if that other magic left him one day? He'd be left no better for having studied at all this year!) and learning to control his "other" magic at all other times. The respect-and frank lust-in Draco's eyes was what made Harry feel able to do this, he knew; Harry was so fucking used to thinking of himself as a freak for every little thing that he was that if thinking with his dick was what it took to get him to feel okay about his vast magic, then that was how it was going to be.

Regardless of all of Harry's ostensible progress, his mind healer would NOT have been pleased to find him the way that Draco did, walking into the room that they now shared to find Harry tearfully, hysterically tossing his clothes around and shouting at them.

"Draco, all my clothes are crap. I apparently can't be bothered to go visit my parents' graves more than once in my life, and then when I DO decide to go a second time, I don't even care enough to wear jeans without a hole in them!"

"First of all," said Draco, putting a stop to Harry's frantic sorting and turning him to face him. "You didn't go to your parents' graves more because there was no one who bothered to take you—no, don't look at me like that; I'm not starting a fight about Dumbledore. You are bothered very much, and you DO care; neither of us have nice clothes because we're too poor to afford them."

"Ohhhhh…" Harry felt his eyes grow wide as he was struck by several thoughts that should have occurred to him much, much earlier. He'd always wondered about Draco's new wardrobe of tattered Muggle clothing, and had meant to ask him about it several times, but never did. He'd thought nothing of the fact that Minerva had made those students' parents buy Draco new things after they'd destroyed the old ones. He knew that most of the money from the Victims of War Compensation Fund had come from severe fines settled onto known Death Eaters…

Draco was poor now, and Harry hadn't even bothered to notice. Draco, who had always been impeccably and tastefully dressed as a child, now wore Muggle clothes that were in worse shape than Harry's, and Harry hadn't cared. And Harry took such little care of his own possessions that Draco had thought that Harry was poor, too.

"Actually, Draco… I've got a lot of money," said Harry slowly, not sure of the correct tone to use and feeling like an ass no matter how his words were inflected. "I'm just an idiot and I don't notice things." He paused, then said even more carefully, "I'm sorry I didn't see that you needed new clothes. Will you come shopping with me and let me buy us new stuff?"

"Absolutely not," Draco said, turning away and beginning to sort and refold Harry's clothes with absolute care and total precision.

"Please, Draco? You know I have no fashion sense."

"This is true." Draco was still folding Harry's clothes like a house elf, and decidedly not looking at him, but at least Harry knew that he was listening.

"I want to look nice for my parents, and so you have to come and pick out my clothes for me. And I won't buy anything unless you let me buy you new things, too."

Draco turned to Harry, and Harry could see that he was torn. "You don't have to buy me things," he said.

"It would make me really, really, really happy to buy you things," said Harry, trying to school his face into the absolute sincerity that he felt. Damn it, he was crap at talking about money; how did people put normal expressions on their faces while speaking? He felt like fucking Uncle Vernon bragging about a stupid two-pound raise.

Harry decided that he might as well just confess. "And you could teach me what to buy. It's stupid-I have all this money, but I was so poor as a kid that I don't know how to not look stupid spending any of it."

"You invest it, dummy," said Draco, sounding quite a bit like his old, poncy self at this sudden turn to practical money matters. "Do you even have a Goblin Advisor?"

"Ummmm… no."

"Okay, we WILL go shopping, and I WILL let you buy us some clothes, because although I look good in anything, Merlin knows that you could use some new shirts. And socks. Oh, and something to wear when you're cold that's not a Gryffindor Quidditch hoodie. But we are also going to go to Gringotts—"

"I'm not allowed in Gringotts anymore."

"You will tell me about that later. Fine, we will go see my father's former Goblin Advisor. She's in private practice, so she's not inside Gringotts but she can handle all your Gringotts business for you, and she's extremely qualified—she had my family living like kings off just the interest on our investments until the Ministry took it all away from us."

The reminder of that, and Harry's thoughtlessness, again made his heart sink. "I spoke on your behalf at the trial," Harry said in a small voice, looking at his feet, thrown immediately from feeling like Uncle Vernon to feeling like a toddler. He spared a small, silent "Fuck you" for his mind healer, who was behind all of this "Don't stuff your feelings down, Harry—share them!" crap that he was forcing himself to painfully undergo right now.

"I know you did, Love," said Draco, leaving the tidy stacks of clothing and going over to take Harry into his arms and lean his forehead against his. "You kept my mum and me out of Azkaban, and you frankly made us sound loads better than we actually were. My mum still owls me every other day about why I can't get you home to see her so she can thank you again."

Suddenly Draco smiled, and shook Harry gently by the arms that he was holding. "Hey, I know what will cheer you up!"

"What?" Harry asked.

"Let's go shopping!"

The meeting with Harry's new Goblin Advisor was actually really interesting ("Draco?" Harry had asked, "This advisor won't try to get me to invest in weird stuff, will she? Like, Dark stuff?" "Um… yeah," Draco had replied. "Right. She'll ask you if you want tea, and you'll say that you do, and then she'll ask you if you take your tea dark or light. Tell her light." Harry had opened his mouth, then shut it. Fuck the feels—there was no way he was asking for more info on that). Harry insisted that Draco sit in on the meeting with him to help him—and to keep him away from accidentally drinking dark wizard tea—and on the way out, Draco said, "You didn't tell me that you were part owner of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes."

"Yeah, I was a founding investor. Used my Triwizard Tournament money, after Cedric's family wouldn't take it."

"Well," said Draco, a familiar glint in his eye, "Then you are ABSOLUTELY taking me shopping!"

Harry and Draco bought some wizarding clothes, at Draco's insistence—"What do you mean, you've never worn lace-up trousers?!"—but when Harry had purchased them enough of what he was definitely calling in his head "poncy git clothes," and they had stopped by for a quick visit to see George and for Harry to order some surprises to be delivered to the Gryffindor House party (he couldn't seem to get that giggling boy out of his head this afternoon, sigh), Harry Apparated them to Bluewater, where Draco proved himself as adept at determining what Muggle clothes would look best on them as he was with wizard clothes. For all the fat lot of good that his inheritance had done him as a kid, Harry took immense pleasure, and not a fair bit of pride, at being able to buy everything that Draco selected for them. "This is the way you treat people, you fucking Dursleys," he thought to himself, and then pointedly removed all grim thoughts of them from his mind. This day belonged to him, Draco, and his parents, not them.

The afternoon was growing late as Harry and Draco finished up, and by the time they'd Apparated back to the gates of Hogwarts, hiked back to their room, and Draco had given all their packages to his house elf to put away ("I still feel creepy about having a house elf work for me," Harry said. "That," replied Draco, "Is something that you officially have too much money to say"), it was high time to dress for Godric's Hollow. Although Harry hadn't been enthusiastic about the poncy git clothes at the time, watching Draco contentedly fussing with the grey wizard-style suit robes that he'd chosen for himself (which robes happened to show off his bum to excellent effect, Harry noted), Harry saw their appeal. Draco looked marvelous, of course, but you could also tell that he felt marvelous—Harry hadn't noticed the worry lines on Draco's face until they were gone, but as he looked in the mirror and adjusted his collar, humming a song that had been popular on the wireless lately, his face was smoother, younger, a little more like the innocent, giggling, eleven-year-old version of Draco that surely had mightily enjoyed his own Halloween House party, too. Harry walked up behind him, wrapped his arms around Draco's waist, and put his head on Draco's shoulder.

"Your parents would be horrified to know that you were with a Malfoy, you know," said Draco to their reflections in the mirror.

"Nonsense," Harry said. "They'd be happy to know that I was in love."


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry, or Draco, or Ron, or Hermione. I'll put them back as soon as I'm done playing with them-I promise!

As they left their room and passed through the Common Room on their way out, it was clear that the other eighth-years had, indeed, been able to convince Neville to have a bit of a party. Dean had brought out Muggle Jenga, and the squeals of the magic-born teenagers every time the tower fell and did not pick itself back up again had the Muggle-borns rolling with laughter.

Harry clapped Neville on the shoulder as he passed, then thought better of it and bent down to speak to him. "Hanging in there, Nev?"

"Yeah," Neville replied. "You know me."

"I just wanted you to know," said Harry, "that your parents are in my thoughts, too. Maybe in a couple of days you and I and can get together over a bottle of firewhiskey and talk for a while."

Neville looked up at him with strained but grateful eyes. "Thanks for remembering, Harry. I think I'd actually like that. My regards to your parents, too."

"See you later, then?"

"Yeah, I'll be here."

Just as Harry and Draco had reached the secret door, they heard "Harry, wait!", and Hermione ran up from her room, holding a large parcel.

"You run well in heels, Hermione," Harry said to her, kissing her cheek. "Come on, then, give us a spin."

"Ta, Harry, and only if I get a spin from you, as well. Don't you two look nice?" said Hermione, but dutifully handed the parcel to Harry and obliged him with a spin, for which there was much general applause from the Common Room. As soon as she was done, however, she took the parcel right back and said, "Now you two," and was not satisfied until both Harry and Draco had turned around to show off their new outfits—Harry a bit bashfully, but Draco with flair, of course.

"I was afraid I'd missed you," Hermione said busily, handing the parcel back again to Harry and then straightening her dress. Harry opened the box awkwardly with one hand while supporting it with the other, and his breath caught.

"Oh, Hermione," he said, his voice breaking and tears springing to his eyes. "Christmas roses." The box held a wreath of them, identical to the wreath that Hermione had conjured for him last Christmas Eve to lay at his parents' graves. Harry handed the box to Draco and then caught Hermione up in a giant hug. "You and me, yeah?" he said to her, not even caring that his voice was rough with emotion.

"You and me always. Now scoot before you make me cry, too, and Padma already did my makeup. If you two don't have evening plans," said Hermione, stepping back to include Draco. "You should come back here. Apparently we're all going to try to meet for a nightcap after the Feast tonight, if you're up for it."

"Yeah, we'll see," Harry said.

Before Hermione ran back to her room she abruptly turned and hugged Draco, too, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, and said something in his ear that Harry couldn't hear. Draco looked at her in surprise, then nodded.

When they Apparated into Godric's Hollow, Draco looked around curiously. "It's funny," he said. "But I've never been here."

"No? Were you afraid you'd catch fire if you stepped into a Gryffindor town?"

"Very funny, you. Actually, before the War—the first War, you know—my family and the Potters would have been friendly, going to each other's parties and all. The old Pureblood families, regardless of their political leanings, always did socialize."

"Just think," said Harry, leaning against Draco's arm as they walked toward the cemetery, "If there hadn't been a first War, perhaps you and I would have had playdates together when we were small, perhaps gone to the same nursery school—do wizards have nursery school? Perhaps we would have fallen in love a long time before we did."

"I would have liked to have had a playdate with you," Draco said. "I had a pet Puffskein, and a castle set with knights that really fought and a dragon that blew real smoke."

"Yeah? I had a toy broomstick that really flew, and my dad could turn into a stag. Oh, and my godfather could have taken us for rides on his motorcycle. That really flew, too!"

And so it was with wistfulness that Harry arrived at his parents' graves—not grief, exactly, because his body was so tired of grief that it had often just stopped registering it, but nevertheless a sadness that was full of wishing that things had been different, that life had treated him more kindly as a child.

Draco unboxed the wreath of Christmas roses and offered them to Harry, who placed them on his parents' graves just as he had that other wreath last Christmas Eve. And also like last Christmas Eve, Harry had someone next to him to love him and comfort him. Unlike last Christmas, he was warm and well-fed, dressed in new clothes and free from danger. With Draco standing behind him, his arms steady around him, Harry leaned back against Draco's chest and wished for more, but was grateful for what he did have.

As Draco and Harry shared dinner afterwards at a small, fancy restaurant in Godric's Hollow (the proprietor, who recognized Harry and greeted him by name, may have given the side-eye to Harry's date, but nevertheless sent a complimentary bottle of wine to their table, so that they could "toast to your parents, Mr. Potter. They'd be proud of you"), Harry found himself feeling almost giddy with relief at having survived the day. He hadn't been attacked by a troll or a basilisk or a Dark Lord, he didn't have to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs tonight, and although he grieved for his parents, and for the War, and for Sirius and Remus and Tonks and Fred and Hedwig and all the others killed, he, himself was okay.

Of course a feeling like that couldn't last.

When Harry and Draco returned to their Common Room rather late that night, the eighth-year get-together was still going strong, and they quickly changed out of their nice suit robes and into sweatpants and T-shirts (one aspect of Muggle clothing that even Draco admitted was far preferable to wizard clothes was their lounge wear) and joined the others.

Harry accepted a drink from Padma. "I'm afraid we're down to firewhiskey and pumpkin juice," she said, putting a glass full of the unlikely combination into his and Draco's hands. "Nev might have drunk more than his fair share tonight," and she nodded her head towards Neville, who was sitting in a chair by the fire, his head resting on one hand. "He's had a hard time of it lately."

"Thanks, Padma," Harry said, and went to sit near Neville, joining Ron, Hermione, and Luna, who were already there, talking quietly amongst themselves.

"Hullo, Mate," Ron said.

"Did your evening go well?" asked Hermione.

"It did, thanks," Harry said. "It felt like people there remembered my parents, so it was a nice place to be tonight. And thanks again for the wreath—without you, I think I'd have ended up going empty-handed a second time."

Luna put a hand on Harry's arm. "I think your parents would be so happy if they could see you now."

"Oh, really? I don't!" Neville no longer held his head in his hand, but glared sharply at Harry.

"What?!" Harry said, utterly shocked.

"I think they'd be appalled to see you with a Death Eater." Everyone gasped, and space around them went quiet.

"Neville, Draco is NOT a Death Eater," Harry said, attempting to hold onto his sudden rush of anger by remembering that Neville was his friend, and was clearly suffering. But that did NOT make it okay to speak this way about his Draco.

"Oh, really?" Neville asked sarcastically. "Shall we take a look at his arm? Oi! Draco!" he shouted across the room. Draco looked up in shock from where he was laughing with Blaise. "Let's see your arm, then!"

"Harry?" Draco asked, worry and uncertainty in his voice.

Harry was still so angry that he didn't trust himself to speak, but fortunately Ron spoke up immediately. "Yeah, Nev's not doing real well tonight. Hey, Neville, how about you and me hang out in my room for the rest of the night? We'll listen to the radio and talk trash about the Slytherins," he said to Neville, but cut an apologetic look at Harry.

"No, I don't think so," Neville spit out, rising unsteadily to his feet. "Harry says that Draco's not a Death Eater, but I've seen his Dark Mark." Neville stalked towards Draco, stumbling through groups of the other eighth-years on the floor, all of whom just stared at him, unsure of what to do. "If he's not a Death Eater but he's got a Dark Mark, maybe he'd like me to take that Dark Mark off of him for him." And Neville pulled his wand.

Neville went to speak again, to say who knows what that he'd never be able to take back, but Harry made him stop. He made a barrier, translucent but quite apparent, appear in front of Draco, and he made himself be in front of that barrier.

"This is not the War," Harry told himself sternly, and forced himself to see what was really happening. "This is not the War, and Neville is not well." He released Neville, only distantly hearing the gasps and screams of the other eighth-years—he guessed grimly that he was one of the few people who could figure out a way to shock these former combatants.

Harry didn't recognize the spells that Neville sent towards him, but he made them stop as soon as they left his wand, so it didn't matter. He dimly heard Ron and Luna encouraging the other eighth-years to step back to the far side of the room, and saw out of the corner of his eye Hermione slip out of the secret door, but he remained focused on Neville. When Neville made to move towards him again, he stopped him. He could feel Draco pounding on the barrier that kept him and Blaise safe behind him, but he didn't spare the attention to turn to him.

"If you're with the Death Eaters now, then I have to fight you, as well!" Neville ground out against all the barriers that Harry was holding against him, the cords in his neck straining from the effort.

"Neville," said Harry. "The War is over. We won, and you helped me kill Voldemort. You and I are friends, and so are you and Draco. We wouldn't ever hurt you."

Neville continued to struggle (and Harry knew that the fact that he was able to move at all against Harry's barriers meant that he, too, was a more powerful wizard than anyone in the school had suspected), but then suddenly stopped. "Oh, fuck… Harry, Mate, I am so sorry." Neville collapsed to his knees, and Harry let him. Luna ran to Neville and gathered him into her arms, and Harry knew that it was safe to release the barrier that held Draco and Blaise, so he did. Just then, Hermione came back through the secret door, followed closely by Minerva in her tartan dressing gown and a pajama-clad man that Harry assumed was likely to be Neville's mind healer. Hermione rushed over to Ron and they began to talk quietly but intently to each other. Minerva scanned the room, her eyes finally resting on Harry and giving him a quizzical, suspicious look. The mind healer walked over to Neville, Luna moving aside to let him, and offered his hand to Neville.

"What do you say, Nev?" the mind healer asked. "How about you come spend the night with me tonight?"

"Will I get to come back to school tomorrow?" asked Neville in a shaky voice.

"Probably not tomorrow, Buddy, but absolutely soon, yeah?"

Neville began to sob, then, but dutifully took the mind healer's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. Luna kissed Neville on the cheek, and then the mind healer wrapped one arm around Neville's shoulders and escorted him out the secret door.

"Is everyone else alright?" Minerva asked the room, although her eyes still rested on Harry. "Would anyone else like me to call their mind healer for them? You know they'd want you to call for them if you needed them."

"Me, Headmistress," sad Padma tearfully.

"Alright, Miss Parvati," Minerva said kindly. "Come along with me and we'll fetch her. She'll be happy that we called. If anyone else needs me tonight, feel free to firecall from your room and I'll be right there." Minerva and Padma left, and then there was silence.

Harry stood still. Although some of the eighth years were talking amongst themselves and some were heading back to their rooms, a fair number were eyeing him, clearly shocked by the vast magic that they'd just witnessed. Harry felt himself a child again, frozen by their speculation about his origins, his intentions. Would the gossip begin, now? The newspaper articles? The bullies, the songs, the taunts? He felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped, but it was only Blaise.

"Hey, Mate," Blaise said. "Take care of your man, alright?" Harry finally turned around to face Draco, then, for the first time since he'd erected the barrier for him, and was shocked at what he saw. His own mind immediately cleared of trash at the sight of Draco, braced against the wall, hugging himself, his head down, tears dripping off his face and onto the carpet.

Harry went immediately to Draco and wrapped his arms around him. "Let's go to our room now," he said, and walked him there, dismantling and resettling the wards at the door as they passed through it. "What the hell," he thought to himself, and then improved the wards so that they wrapped completely around their room in all directions. A dragon wouldn't be able to break through the ceiling now, nor Voldemort himself fly in through the window. If Draco felt the new, improved wards going up he didn't say, but Harry felt his shoulders perhaps relax by a margin.

Harry sat Draco down on their bed and knelt to remove Draco's socks, kissing the arch of each foot and then setting it back on the floor. He sat back on his heels and looked at Draco, who still wouldn't uncurl his arms from around himself or look at Harry. "What is it, Love?" he finally asked.

"I hate myself," Draco whispered, looking at his feet.

"Don't," said Harry.

"I AM a Death Eater. A monster. The things I did… Did you even listen to my trial?"

"I did." Harry had moved to a hidden part of the gallery after he'd spoken at Draco's trial—he hadn't realized that Draco had known that, but considering that since he was eleven years old he had always, always known where Draco was in relation to him at any given time he supposed now that it wasn't surprising.

"They even showed you the photographs of that Muggle child that I tortured. How can you look at me and not want to throw up?"

Harry actually had vomited after those photographs had been submitted and displayed to the gallery, had run from the chamber and then had had a panic attack on the floor in a bathroom stall, but he would certainly go to his grave without ever telling Draco that. "Everyone who testified about that agreed under Veritaserum that the Death Eater in charge of that mission would have killed that child, and his infant sister, if you hadn't done that. Every single one said that you only tortured when required to, and when doing so was the least catastrophic of all options for the victim. None of them had any qualms about saying that you didn't have the heart for what you were doing. Yes, that kid is never going to be the same, but he's fucking ALIVE because of you, Draco, and so is his baby sister. You're a fucking hero, and Neville only said that shit to you because he is fucking damaged, just like the rest of us, and that's fucking Voldemort's fault, not ours."

Draco's arms gradually released their hold as Harry spoke, and Harry wondered how much of this he could have avoided by simply fucking telling Draco right from the beginning that of course he'd heard Draco's trial, and of course he understood everything that Draco had been made to do—had Draco been feeling this entire time that Harry was disgusted by his actions? Harry mentally kicked himself again; why could he not be the kind of boyfriend that he wanted to be? How could he possibly bear the responsibility for this precious heart that had been given to him to keep? But he put that aside to focus on Draco, for the second that he finished speaking, Draco finally looked at him, his eyes searching Harry's face for something that he must have found, because he then lunged toward Harry and pulled him to him, crushing his lips in a desperate, passionate kiss.

Harry pushed Draco back on their bed and knelt over him, putting his entire heart into their kiss. He urged Draco to inch up so that his legs were on the bed, too, and then he lay over him, covering his entire body with his own while they kissed. He wanted Draco to feel safe, to feel loved; he wanted those feelings to bleed their way into Draco's mind and his heart so that he would never feel unsafe or unloved, even by himself, again.

Harry broke off the kiss only to look deep into Draco's eyes, and the look that he saw there seemed thankfully less like the hurt, self-loathing little boy that Draco once was, and more like the strong, war-hardened, confident man that he was now. Draco's hands toyed restlessly with the hem of Harry's shirt, so he removed it for him, and then worked Draco out of his own shirt. Harry sucked his way down Draco's throat, and licked his way down his chest and stomach, pausing to work Draco's nipples until Draco moaned and writhed underneath him. Harry bit Draco's stomach just above the waistband of his sweatpants, and Draco cried out and jerked.

"Thank Merlin for elastic-waisted pants," Harry thought giddily as he pulled Draco's sweatpants down far enough to expose his hard cock; he licked a line up one side and down the other, and then immediately sucked his mouth down on it as far as he could. Draco fisted his hands in Harry's messy hair, and if his voice still sounded weepy as he cried out Harry's name, it also sounded raw and broken in a good way, a way that meant to Harry that the man whom he loved would be alright; with all the love and the vast magic at his disposal, he would make him so, by fucking Merlin.

Harry felt Draco kick his sweatpants off as he sucked him, jolting his body every time Harry flicked the tip of his cock with his tongue. When Draco's hands began to actively pull at him, not just tug, Harry obeyed them, and kissed his way back up Draco's body to his delicious mouth.

"Hey," he said, kissing him again briefly.

"You're wearing too many clothes," was Draco's petulant reply, belied by his half-closed eyelids and the breathlessness in his voice.

"Am I really?" And just for fun, Harry made his own bottoms disappear from his body and land on the bureau across the room (well, instead they smacked the wall and fell on the floor, but Draco didn't have to know that it wasn't on purpose).

Draco gasped, and Harry worried for a second that he'd gone too far with his display of power—would Draco be afraid of him?—but then Draco suddenly flipped them over so that Harry was underneath him, and attacked his mouth again, and Harry was happily reminded again that Draco?

He liked Harry's power. A lot.

"What the hell," Harry decided, and rolled them over again. He sat up over Draco's flanks, and held out one arm to the side, hand open, all while looking deep into Draco's eyes. Draco stared curiously from Harry's face to his outstretched hand, and Harry was perfectly positioned to see the look on Draco's face when the container of lube from the shower flew into the room and smacked right into Harry's open hand. Wandlessly. Non-verbally. Without looking.

Draco looked back into Harry's eyes. "You… I… Harry? Fuck. Me. Right. Fucking. NOW!"

"As you wish," said Harry, and leaned down to kiss Draco again.

Harry urged Draco onto his stomach, and then onto his hands and knees before him. He sat back on his own knees just to admire the sight of Draco before him, arms trembling, knees spread, and Draco turned his head to smile back at him cheekily. "Need me to draw you a map?"

Harry bit him on one ass cheek, and laughed as he squealed. He then bit the other ass cheek, but instead of a squeal he got the groan that he was looking for. He licked the bite marks that he'd made, standing out red and raised on the pale flesh, and Draco caught his breath, and then groaned again and bucked back into Harry, giving him an excellent revelation.

Before Draco could figure out what Harry was going to do and be embarrassed or protest, Harry spread Draco's ass cheeks and then licked a long line up between them. Draco shouted in pleasure and bucked into Harry, but then just as quickly tried to pull away. Harry laughed and caught him by the hips.

"Oh, no, you don't! You trust me, right? Well, this is going to be awesome, I promise." Harry felt Draco relax marginally, and taking that for permission, he took his time licking and sucking and nibbling between Draco's ass cheeks until Draco's voice was hoarse from his shouts of pleasure and his thighs were trembling. Sweat dripped off his body, his untouched cock leaked a pool of pre-cum onto the sheets, and Harry reveled at the sight of him, totally broken-down with desire before him.

Harry took Draco's cock in hand and lightly stroked it while he prepared him, then pressed his own lubed cock to Draco's slick entrance and asked, "Okay?"

"Okay, Love," replied Draco hoarsely, and Harry slid himself home. His neglected cock wanted to pound into Draco's tight, slick heat, but he held himself back, wanting Draco's pleasure much more than his own. He stroked Draco's cock in time with his slow and deep thrusts, and let Draco's thrusts back into him determine their speed. After a few minutes, Draco's breaths began to pant out in grunts, and Harry sped up his thrusting, making himself, for a couple of horrid minutes, try to picture exactly what Petunia Dursley must have looked like in the bath in order to keep from climaxing too quickly from the added stimulation.

Harry sat back on his knees, pulling Draco back with him and encouraging him to be in charge. He wrapped one arm around Draco's chest to support him, and Draco began to wildly slam himself down on Harry's cock, head downturned, exposing his long, slim neck, as he watched Harry jacking him off with his other hand.

Harry gritted his teeth in his efforts not to climax in this position that was out of his control. Draco, too, appeared beside himself, sweat flying from his body as he frantically, repeatedly slapped down onto Harry's cock, his grunts long since grown into shouts. Finally, he lay his head back on Harry's shoulder as he thrust, Harry turned his head to the side and bit Draco's neck hard, just where it met his shoulder, and with a scream Draco climaxed in huge spurts across the bed. Harry lasted no more than a second longer before he, too, was screaming his climax into Draco's neck.

Slowly, as if drugged, Draco crawled forward off of Harry's lap and lay sprawled face-first across the bed. Harry sat kneeling, letting his head hang—he'd climaxed so hard that he actually felt light-headed. When he was reasonably certain that he wasn't going to pass out, he, too crawled forward to lay down.

"That was awesome," he said.

Draco blindly reached out for Harry, then pulled him to him and tucked him into his side. "…so awesome…" he mumbled, and then Harry fell asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine, not mine, not mine! WAAAAAHHHHH!

Harry felt fucking GREAT the next morning, and Draco looked as if he felt fine, too, the self-loathing of the night before completely gone, he wished for good. Harry was glad, because he'd been thinking about something that he wanted to speak to Draco about—the night before had not turned out to be a good night for serious discussions, so it was with relief that Harry could look at a relaxed, smiling, freshly-showered Draco and say, "Hey, I want to talk about something."

Draco's face blanched so Harry quickly added, "It's not bad, I promise. I just… will you sit down with me for a minute?" Instead of using one of the chairs, Draco sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, an open invitation for Harry to sit opposite him. Harry wondered if Draco was consciously or unconsciously trying to bring to mind their excellent night of sex last night, and his heart hurt that Draco might still be worried about what he was going to hear, but to be fair, Harry was nervous about what he was about to say, and was sure that showed on his face.

Without speaking, Harry scooted toward Draco so that their knees touched, then gently reach out for Draco's left arm. He turned it over so that the Dark Mark showed, tenderly kissed the spot, then held it lightly as he looked up into Draco's frightened face. "I could remove this for you, if you wanted," he said simply.

"You could… WHAT?!" All the color bled out of Draco's face.

"My magic is really powerful, and thanks to you, I can control it really well now. I know that when Voldemort put the Dark Mark there, he meant it to last your whole life, but I'm stronger than he was, and I say that it doesn't have to. If you want it gone, I can take it away."

Draco pulled his arm out of Harry's grasp and clutched it in his other hand. "It would be… just… gone?"

"Just gone. It won't even hurt. It's inert now, but I can feel that it's not part of you. If you wanted me to, I'd just reach out… and remove it."

Draco sat still for a long while, his head hung down low, and Harry just rested quietly and let him think. Finally, after a very long time, Draco lifted his head, and Harry could see his decision in his eyes before he spoke a word. "I can't, Harry. I can't just erase what I've done."

"You're stronger now. You're not the same as you were when you were a kid. You don't have to keep this Mark that he put on you. You don't _belong_ to him anymore!"

"I'm the same, Harry," Draco said sadly, "and I think that you know that. I've grown into a better person now, I hope, and I hope that there's nothing in this life that would ever get me to make the decisions that I did as a kid, but those decisions are still part of me. I can't forget what I did, can't act like I don't know what it's like to torture a child, or to let werewolves into a school full of children, or to keep my classmates locked up in a dungeon inside my own fucking house. I can't… I can't wipe it all away, and I'm not going to act like I have. I'm going to own the fact that I did those things, and I'm always going to work to prove that I won't do it again. That's my life, Harry, and you have to accept it."

Harry quietly said, "I thought that you might say that, so I also got you a present." He took a box out of the front pocket of his Quidditch hoodie and passed it over to Draco, who opened it and found the silver cuff that Harry had secretly planned out with the jeweler of a shop they'd visited the previous day. The jeweler had sketched it for him while Draco was fussing over watches, Harry had paid along with their other purchases, and then he'd claimed it from the school's owl post first thing that morning, while Draco had still been in the shower.

The cuff was engraved with a dragon, embraced by a snake. The dragon lay with its wings folded, a hint of forest floor under it and trees on either side—it looked quite a lot like the part of the Forbidden Forest behind that hill by the Quidditch pitch, frankly. The snake was loosely entwined around the dragon, with the overall effect being one of pleasure and comfort, although the two could look like they were fighting if you squinted your eyes a bit and turned your head just the right way. The snake, however, had its head far forward and turned around so that it and the dragon faced each other and looked into each other's eyes, even as they embraced.

"It's you and me," Harry said. "I thought you might like to wear it on your left arm; it won't cover up your Dark Mark, but you wouldn't be able to look at the Mark without seeing the cuff, and you could remember that… I don't know, that we're there for each other? I love you just the way you are, exactly as you are, Draco, and I'm always going to."

Draco didn't say anything in response, but tears fell from his eyes as he put the silver cuff around his wrist, and then he caught Harry's face between his two hands, pulled him towards him, and kissed him deeply and passionately. When they finally parted, Draco simply said, his eyes damp and bright and a flush on his cheeks, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Harry cheerfully. "Now let's go get some breakfast! I'm going to have toast with strawberry jam, and sausages!"

"You're going to have some real fruit along with that, too, right?" Draco bantered back as they gathered their things and went down to eat. "Like _fruit _fruit, right? Not just jam fruit?"

"We'll see!"

The next month flew by far too quickly for consisting of such long days filled with such hard study, but too soon it was December, and the NEWTs were upon them. Draco turned out to be nearly as passionate about studying as Hermione, and between the two of them, they had Ron and Harry prepared as they had never been before—Harry sometimes grimly wondered if he would have expected to do as well on his NEWTs as a typical seventh-year with no Voldemort, or if he'd have been too caught up in teenage drama instead. "Oh, well, silver linings," he thought to himself, and carried on revising his Transfiguration notes.

Occasionally, the others cast a worried eye on Hermione for, although she had always prepared for tests with something akin to hysteria, now she was downright hysterical. Her shrieking at Ron one morning because he'd set their alarm for 5:30 am, not 5:00 am, causing her to lose a half-hour of study time, actually broke through both her Silencio ward AND Draco's, and probably everyone else's in their dorms, as well. The day that Neville finally returned from In-House Therapy she was the only one absent from the Common Room as everyone else gathered together to welcome him home; Neville noticed, of course, and asked Harry if she was angry with him, but wasn't comforted at all by Harry's answer that no, Hermione was just unwilling to leave her studies.

The night before the NEWTs were to begin, every eighth-year had been sternly instructed both privately by each of their mind healers and publicly, by Headmistress McGonagall herself, that they were absolutely not to cram that night. "Have a relaxing evening," she told them at dinner. "Play something silly, like Exploding Snap. Listen to the wireless. Go to bed early, and you'll wake up refreshed and ready. There's nothing that you can study tonight that would do you more good than being well-rested and relaxed tomorrow morning."

And Harry and Draco, and a few others, had taken Minerva's advice. Many of them had gone out flying after dinner—playing four-on-four non-touch Quidditch, and leading each other to their favorite spots on the grounds—and then Harry and Draco and Ron (Hermione had flatly refused to leave the castle after dinner, and had gone straight to their dorm) had gone to visit Hagrid. They were walking back toward the Front Entrance, pockets weighed down with Rock Cakes, when Seamus came running to meet them.

"Hermione!" he panted, so out of breath that he was rendered practically unable to speak. "Freaking! The fuck! OUT! They want! To call Headmistress! I said! Get you!" Without listening to more, Harry grabbed Draco's waist on his left and Ron's arm on his right, and he made them all three be back in their Common Room.

Indeed, Hermione was freaking the fuck out. Padma and Pansy were attempting to restrain her under the guise of comforting her, speaking to her soothingly as they tried to keep her from destroying her books and her precious notes and the rest of the Common Room along with them, it seemed. Paper was everywhere—torn pages from textbooks, impeccably-copied notes ripped apart—and Hermione was in the middle of it, screaming. "Nothing!" was what Harry could make out. "NOTHING! NONE OF IT! NONE!"

Harry turned to Ron. "You or me?" he asked.

Ron didn't even turn to Harry—he was staring, wide-eyed and horrified, at Hermione's breakdown. "You! You!"

"Okay, then. You two want to hang out tonight? I think I'll be in with Hermione until morning. See you at breakfast, Love," Harry said, kissed Draco briefly on the lips, then jogged over to Hermione.

"Thanks, you two," said Harry to Padma and Pansy. "Move away from her a sec, would you?"

They both complied, Padma saying, "You'll be fine, okay, Hermione?" Harry stepped directly in front of Hermione, took her head in his hands, and bent his head down so that their foreheads were touching. As soon as Padma and Pansy were clear of them, he made himself and Hermione be in her bedroom, and he put the Wards up behind them.

Hermione continued to scream, but Harry ignored it. He made her wireless come on, and immediately an old-timey song began to play, sung by those witch sisters who'd been so popular a few decades ago; Minerva had put them on often, back when the Order had stayed at Grimmauld Place. Harry took Hermione in his arms, pressed her cheek to his chest, and swayed back and forth holding her, softly humming along to the song. Very, very gradually, Hermione's shrieks wound down to cries, and then simply to crying, if her broken, hoarse, grief-filled sobs could be called something so common.

Finally, Hermione was quiet—weeping, still, but quietly. Harry held her away from him to look at her, then smiled. "Go get into your jim-jams," he said. Hermione's tears still choked her, and she still cried, but she went obediently to the bathroom and shut the door.

While she was gone, Harry switched out his own day clothes for pajamas (he wondered if Draco was on the other side witnessing the switch), then focused on the radio and tried to really, really remember what station had been playing on a certain radio one night exactly one year ago tonight. Immediately, the wireless began to play The Weird Sisters, one of the songs that was taken by the Order as an anthem of sorts. Harry looked in Hermione's wardrobe and found some extra blankets (after the winter they'd had last year, he knew the neither he nor Hermione would ever be without plenty of warm blankets), and tossed them over the bed. Finally, he closed his eyes, turned his face to the ceiling, and thought about the weather that night. Frost raced up the windowpane and the fire dimmed as the room abruptly became thirty degrees colder. Harry shivered. At just that moment, Hermione padded in bare feet and pajamas out of the bathroom.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, shocked out of her tears at the temperature. Then she suddenly gave a surprised laugh, and raced over to her bed and dove under the covers, Harry a second behind her. They landed together in the middle and huddled there, Hermione wrapped in Harry's arms, letting their body heat warm the space around them.

When they had both stopped shivering, Harry tenderly picked up Hermione's arm from where it lay wrapped across his chest. He drew back the sleeve to see that despite her promise to him earlier that year, there were not just deep scratches that must have been from this evening, but also many layers of scars from many more months' of scratches.

"Your mind healer have much to say about this?" he asked.

"She's… not pleased," Hermione admitted. "I convinced her it's the stress of school, but I've been having more nightmares about my parents lately, and I know she's just waiting to see whether or not I improve after the NEWTs."

"Do you think that you will?" Harry asked, healing the scratches and making the scratch scars go away.

Hermione rolled toward him a bit and hid her face in his chest. "No," she admitted in a quiet voice. "After the NEWTs, I won't have studying to keep me busy. I'll graduate, and I'll go… where? Home to parents who don't remember me? Ron's house? Oxford? I've even thought about moving to Australia and pretending to be, I don't know—a dog walker? A gardener?—just to see if my parents would hire me on and I could be with them again," Hermione sighed.

"You know you reneged on my favor, right? I thought you'd promised me that you weren't going to scratch yourself like this again."

"I know… I'm sorry," Hermione said in a small voice against his T-shirt.

Harry thought for a bit, then said, "Tonight, let's just pretend that all this is ahead of us. Maybe it won't ever even happen. Maybe the world will end tomorrow, and we've just got tonight. Let's just be in our tent tonight, okay? We just robbed that grocery store a few days ago—"

"We didn't rob it really," Hermione protested. "I know you wrote them a fat check after the War."

"Yes, but that's after tonight. Tonight, we're excellent grocery store robbers, which means we just had an awesome dinner of all the delicious things that one can cook over a camp stove—"

"Not much, as it turns out."

"Our tummies are nice and comfy, our favorite station is on the radio, and even though it's the coldest night of the year outside, we're warm and safe inside."

"We are, aren't we?" Hermione said. "No matter what else is horrible outside, we're actually okay here."

"We are," agreed Harry. He held Hermione, and they listened to the music on the radio—all their favorites, all the hits that blanketed the station back when the radio was what they used in order to have more company than just themselves—and they kept close together to keep warm, and very, very gradually, Harry felt Hermione relax and then fall asleep. Very, very gradually, so as not to wake her, he made the temperature rise back to normal, peeling off the covers as necessary, then made the radio go silent, and then he, too, slept.

Harry took it upon himself to make sure that Hermione's wand alarm was set for a reasonable time for the first morning of NEWTs, and when it blared and she bolted awake and saw the time, she looked at him sideways, but said nothing. She looked well-rested, refreshed, and ready for the long, stressful day ahead of her, but Harry had one more thought that he'd been thinking, that he hoped would go the way that he wanted it to this time. In fact, he hoped it so much that he was willing to take a gamble.

As they both sat up, Harry turned to face Hermione and said, "I'm gonna head off to my room to get dressed, but I actually have a present for you first."

"Ooh, a First Day of NEWTs gift?!" Hermione asked excitedly. Only Hermione would consider the first day of NEWTs to be a gift-giving occasion.

"Sure," agreed Harry, and again took her arm with its "Mudblood" scrawl. "Watch, okay?" he asked, and Hermione turned her eyes from his to, doubtfully, her scars. Slowly enough that Hermione could feel that they were being removed, not glamoured, Harry simply looked at those scars that Hermione hated so much, and he made them go away.

Hermione gasped, and tears sprung to her eyes. She felt the arm with her other hand, her fingers running over and over again over the newly-smooth expanse of skin. She looked up at Harry's face. "Really?" she asked.

"Really," he replied.

"Forever?"

"Yes, forever."

Hermione threw herself forward, and for a fraction of a second Harry thought that they were going to kiss, and thought that Hermione thought so, too, but then she checked herself, stopped herself just short of Harry's lips, and threw her arms around him instead, burying her face in his neck. Harry could feel more hot tears wet against his shirt collar, but his could also feel her huge smile.

"Well, Miss Granger," Harry finally said, as Hermione leaned back from him. "Today is a big day, and I know that I'd like to shower and dress and eat some breakfast first. Meet you later in the Great Hall?"

"Yes," said Hermione. "Oh! I can't wait! I have to go tell Ron!" Hermione bolted from her bed and ran for the door. She was almost at the latch when Harry said, "Dude. Walk of Shame much?" Hermione looked down at her rumpled pajamas and blushed, then threw her head back, laughing, and said, "Oh, let them talk. We need more to gossip about around here than each other's mental health!" So she and Harry, both pajama-clad, left Hermione's room together, and snickered when they passed Hannah and Hermione greeted her raised eyebrows with a calm "Morning, Hannah! Happy NEWT Day!"

Although Harry was still buoyed with happiness at Hermione's reaction to having her "Mudblood" scars removed, he did open the door to Draco's (and his still, hopefully, even after last night) room a bit tentatively. He found Draco sitting, showered and fully dressed, on their bed. Harry had a guilty thought that perhaps by staying with Hermione last night, he'd caused Draco to have a rough night on his own right before NEWTs, but he shoved it down as impossible to amend and instead asked, "Are you mad at me?"

Draco looked at him, his face absolutely expressionless. "Should I be?"

"No."

"Well, then of course I'm not mad." And thank Merlin, but Draco smiled at him, too, a big, beaming one, so of course it must be true. "Is Hermione okay?"

"Yeah," Harry said, then ran over to Draco and tackled him backwards onto the bed. "I missed you," he said, nuzzling his face into Draco's collar.

"You smell like cinnamon and frizzy hair potion."

"Scandalous, I know. I'll shower in a sec. I got Hermione to go to sleep at a reasonable time, and I fixed her alarm so it wouldn't wake her too early—which I'm worried now that I should have also done for you—and… I took away her 'Mudblood' scar, Draco." Harry wasn't 100% sure how Draco would react to that news, since he'd so firmly rejected the removal of his own Dark Mark, but Draco's face absolutely changed at Harry's words, and became, if anything, a little lighter, a little clearer.

"Thank fucking Merlin," he said. "I had actually meant to ask you about doing that, but I didn't really know how to bring it up. I… I was there, you know, when Aunt Bella did that. It… Merlin, I'd rather die than see anything like that ever again." Draco paused. " I did nothing, of course. Just stood there, Mum Vanishing my tears so nobody would see that I was crying and punish me."

"If you hadn't been there, and I hadn't fought you, I wouldn't have been master of the Elder wand. Voldemort would have been even more powerful as the master of the most powerful wand in the world, and who knows what else he could have done, who else he could have killed. Have you ever thought that at the time, as hard as it was, and as much as you regret it, you were exactly who you needed to be for everything to happen the way that it did? You helped save the world, Draco, and that's all there is to it."

"Every mythic story needs its Judas, I suppose," Draco said, and wiped his eyes. "Gah, don't make me cry on NEWT Day!"

"Oh, Merlin, not you, too!" And Harry rolled off of Draco and went to take a shower before Draco could demand a Newt-Day gift of him, too.


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: Harry and his world belong to someone else, although if that person wanted to give them to me, I'd certainly take GOOD care of them!

Maybe it was Harry who'd needed a gift, because NEWT-Day was stressful. Like, really stressful. It didn't help that sitting the written exams reminded him much too powerfully of sitting his OWLs, and all that had happened that night. Fucking Merlin, did he miss Sirius. Was Sirius always with his parents, Harry wondered, or did he just reunite with them when they all came to him in the Forbidden Forest? Harry tore his mind away from that, sticking a pin in it to maybe bring up with his mind healer, if he didn't feel too stupid about it, and tried to refocus on his essay question, but for all the studying he'd done, and the fact that he _knew_ this material, knew he knew, it, fuck, was it hard to get it down correctly on paper.

Harry thought grimly to himself that it should have occurred to him earlier to inform one of the eighth-years' consulting tutors that he didn't test well, and get some actual fucking tutoring for that.

Harry's mind felt numb, almost sedated, as he joined the others at their table for lunch. Hermione, too, was in a tizzy, but of no more hysteria than was typical for exam days, so Harry wasn't concerned. He didn't miss the fact, however, that several of the other eighth-years eyed _him_ with concern as he sat down; they'd all become too good at predicting each others' breakdowns, and Harry wasn't pleased that the odds were stacked in favor of him being the next imminent freak-out.

Draco, who'd been deep in conversation with Blaise when Harry arrived, turned to greet him and he, too, blanched at the sight of Harry. He immediately seemed to school his features into determined calm, however, and only dished a meat pie and some steamed green beans onto Harry's plate. "Eat every bite," he said, "and drink your entire glass of water. You have five minutes." Then he turned back to Blaise.

Harry didn't know what the fuck was up with Draco, but he didn't have any better ideas about how to spend his lunch hour—hell, he didn't have any ideas in his head at all—so he resolutely did as he was told, forcing down the food and drink that he had no appetite for, hoping that it didn't come back up in the middle of the next exam.

Exactly five minutes later, Draco said a farewell to Blaise, pushed back his chair, held his hand out to Harry, and said, "Finished?"

"Sure," Harry replied tersely. He was just about over this, he decided. Maybe he'd go wherever the fuck Draco wanted him to go, then just fuck off back to Grimmauld Place afterward and fuck the exams. Kreacher could fetch his belongings. He didn't need his fucking NEWTs.

Making his grim plans, Harry barely noticed where Draco was leading him, until a door shut behind him. Harry looked around in confusion.

"Ummm… where are we?"

"A closet, my Love," said Draco matter-of-factly. "Doesn't it look like a closet?"

"Yeeeessss…" Harry hesitated, still confused. Had a Death Eater Polyjuiced himself into Draco and taken him here to assassinate him? Harry began to inch his hand towards his wand, while asking, "Why are we in a closet?"

"So that nobody will see us while I do this," said Draco, and dropped to his knees in front of Harry.

"Be a dear and do the wards, would you? Oh, and we're definitely going to need a VERY strong Silencio," Draco added, busily working the fastenings to Harry's trousers, then reaching up to undo the buttons of Harry's shirt. Harry made the spells happen using the two percent of his brain that was not absolutely laser-focused on Draco at the moment. He was more than half-hard already, but the memory of Moody wouldn't let him put one last niggling worry to rest.

"What of my belongings do you hate the most?" Harry asked.

Draco looked up at Harry and smiled in a sexy, understanding way that did Harry's heart in, Polyjuice or not. "Your bloody awful Gryffindor Quidditch hoodie. Believe it's me now, or would you like to ask me another? We could ask each other questions instead of me sucking your cock, but I would much, much, much rather suck your cock. Would you like me to suck your cock, Harry?"

Harry nodded mutely.

"Then tell me to."

Harry felt his legs trembling; he was suddenly so aroused that he had tunnel vision; all he could see was Draco, licking his lips and staring up at him, his mouth a fraction of an inch away from the leaking head of Harry's cock. If Draco just stuck out his tongue…

"Suck my cock, Draco," whispered Harry, in a voice that he didn't remember being so gravelly the last time that he used it.

"As you wish," Draco said. He did stick out his tongue, then, first delicately licking up the bead of pre-cum at the head of Harry's cock, then lapping around the entire head while Harry stared down at him, feeling almost out of his body in amazement. Ten minutes ago, he was about to quit school and go be a hermit with his insane house elf; now, he was hiding in a broom closet, getting what was shaping up to be the best blow job of his life from the person whom he loved most in the world—what the hell had he been thinking, thinking about leaving here?

Then Draco swallowed Harry's cock down as far as he could, and all conscious thought fled.

Instead, Harry watched Draco bob his head up and down his cock, hollowing his cheeks out as he sucked with an intensity that made Harry's legs practically give way. The inside of Draco's mouth felt like it was on fire, it was so hot. It felt almost as good as being inside Draco's ass, but also more intense, in some ways, because regardless of the speed of Draco's bobbing, his strong, supple, clever tongue never ceased its roving, twirling around the underside of Harry's cock, or laving across the head as Draco went so far back as to almost pop off. Draco looked up and caught Harry's eye, then, and grinned cheekily at him from around Harry's cock, then slammed down on him again further than he ever had before.

Draco reached up and found Harry's hands, where they were clenched stupidly in the two halves of his unbuttoned shirt, and put them on the back of his head, encouraging Harry to control the depth and the pace at which he was sucking him. Harry did so, and found that the gasps and pants that he hadn't been able to control immediately became grunts that he also was absolutely not able to stop himself from making. Draco rewarded him with another cheeky grin.

One of Draco's hands busied itself squeezing and caressing the base of Harry's shaft, lubed up with plenty of saliva from the blow job. The other hand was absent for a minute, and then inserted itself between his legs and slid between his ass cheeks. Harry felt Draco tease his entrance, and then one long, lube-slick finger slid inside him and began to thrust in time with the pace that Harry was setting on his cock.

Harry couldn't help himself—he began to shout with every thrust, and to thrust wildly himself, keeping part of his mind careful that he wasn't hurting Draco, or thrusting too hard against him or too deeply into his mouth. Draco made the experience that much hotter, though, by appearing to love having Harry fucking his mouth, while he inserted first a second, then a third writhing, twisting finger into Harry's ass.

Harry lost track of all time, all place.

Draco suddenly sucked Harry's cock deep, while at the same time pushing his fingers even further into Harry and then bending, and with a long scream Harry climaxed into Draco's mouth. Draco milked Harry's cock until it was spent, then jumped to his feet, threw Harry around, bent him over, and with a slam he trust his lube-slicked cock deep into Harry's ass. In two or three thrusts, before the aftershocks of Harry's intense orgasm had even really faded, Draco was screaming out his own orgasm.

Draco withdrew, then turned Harry back around to him, much more gently this time, and softly leaned into him. Harry mumbled something, but the languor of his orgasm meant that even he couldn't really hear it properly. Draco leaned his ear down and said, "What?"

"I said," Harry finally managed to speak much more clearly, "Since when do you keep lube in your pocket?"

"Only since my lover spent the night with another," Draco sighed dramatically, then looked them over. "Oh, shit!" he laughed, and it was true, when Harry inspected himself, that he looked really, really, really well-fucked. Many, many unidentified stains on his pants. Much rumpling of the freshly-ironed shirt. "Um… Scourgify?"

"No problem," said Harry. "Let's get ourselves settled, and I'll fix it." Harry let Draco button up his shirt for him, laughing when Draco stopped to go "tsk! tsk!" over a popped button. He in turn smoothed down Draco's shirt as well as it could be made to go, smugly noting that he'd been so well-fucked by a man who hadn't even needed to unbutton his own shirt to do it. He idly wondered how much clothing Draco could manage to be wearing and still fuck him good, and sorted out pants and shirt and trousers, all in tidy (if rumpled), well-tucked order.

"Now, about your written exams," Draco mentioned breezily, as if that's not what this entire closet interlude had been about. "When you're writing them, the trick is not to think that you're taking a test; instead, pretend that you're studying. Think about another time when you were studying that exact subject, and pretend that right now, you're doing the exact same thing. Just a practice essay."

Harry lunged for Draco and roughly hugged him to his body, tears springing to his eyes. Just as suddenly, he roughly pulled Draco away from him and held him by the shoulders facing him, looking intently into his eyes. "You are everything to me!" he said almost angrily. "You are—I just—Fucking Merlin, I just love you so fucking much!"

Draco looked back at him, his body trembling under Harry's hands, and replied, "I love you, too, so much. Thinking about you has kept me alive at times when I had no other hope. Being with you is… well, it's a greater happiness than I ever thought that I'd achieve. Now, let's go out there and fucking destroy these NEWTs!" He squinted at Harry speculatively. "Metaphorically, of course. I actually want you to just sit down calmly and do really well on them."

"Yeah, yeah," said Harry. "I won't literally destroy the NEWTs… this year." He dismantled the wards and made to open the door for Draco, then stopped. "Oh!" he said. "Right!", and Scougified them so that they were all clean and fresh again, then made their clothes look nice and pressed. And he put his button back on.

The afternoon was still stressful, but not nearly so much as to be unmanageable, as it had been before Draco's intervention. Draco again took charge of Harry in the evening, making him eat well, fucking his brains out, and then putting him to bed early. Nobody else needed Harry's intervention that night, and so he slept well, woke up refreshed and relaxed, and the second day of NEWTs, the practical exams, went much better.

And then, just like that, Intensive Eighth Year was finally over.


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: 1. Do Harry Potter and his world belong to me?

a. Yes.

b. No.

The answer is b.

There was a week's vacation for the eighth-years after NEWTs, during which time they could come and go as they pleased, looking for flats and interviewing for jobs and shopping and relaxing, and then there would be their graduation, and their time at Hogwarts would finally be over. Harry was so ready for this; this last semester had been so different that he'd long ago made peace with the fact that his "real" time at Hogwarts was long gone.

Draco and Harry had made plans to spend this vacation together, first at Grimmauld Place, and then, finally, at Malfoy Manor with Draco's mother, but coming from the last of his regular Friday afternoon catch-up sessions with Hermione (Draco and Ron called these their "playdates," and had taken to hanging out with each other, as well, during these afternoons), Harry knew now that he needed to change those plans. Instead of walking around the lake or hiking in the forest or gossiping over butterbeer at the Hog's Head, he'd taken Hermione to the dis-used classroom that Fred and George had once used as a stink bomb store this afternoon for a quiet place to talk, and although Hermione had wept a lot, and had told Harry that she'd rather not, that it surely wouldn't help and might make things worse, she had finally agreed, and so it was going to be done.

Arriving back at their room, Harry found Draco tidying up after what looked like an afternoon of chess and butterbeer with Ron, while the house elf packed for them. Draco looked up smiling, but then saw the look on Harry's face. "Aw, hell. What now?" he asked petulantly, and his eyes tightened and looked suddenly wary and war-torn.

"I've got to tell you something," said Harry, "and you're not going to like it."

"What else is new," Draco sighed, then sat down on the bed and motioned away the house elf, who disappeared with a pop.

Harry sat down on the edge of the bed next to Draco and took his hand, but couldn't look at him. Guilt floored him, and a little fear, because he knew for a fact that Draco was NOT going to be happy to hear this. His mind suddenly blanked on all the right stuff, the good stuff, the stuff that made fucking sense that he and Hermione had planned for him to say. Instead, when he opened his mouth, what fell out was "I have to go with Hermione instead of you."

Draco was silent, and the sudden tension in the hand that Harry held was his only sign that he'd even been heard. Maybe it hadn't sounded as bad to Draco as had sounded coming out of his mouth? Maybe Draco wouldn't be mad? Maybe- "So you finally chose her," Draco finally breathed.

This was not a response that Harry had even remotely expected. Immediately, his body was flooded with… so many feelings; how could one even start to sort them out? Incensed, confused, frightened and reacting the only way he knew how to react to fright, he jumped up and faced Draco. "WHAT?! What the FUCK, Draco?!"

"Well, that's what we've been building to all this time, right? All this time, and I was never fucking good enough for you. All this time, and it's been Hermione all along, hasn't it? Well, hasn't it?" Draco added furiously, seeing as all Harry could do was stand and stare at him in horror.

"No," breathed Harry, and struggled to continue between the loud sobs that he couldn't stop from breaking out of his body. When had he started crying? Why couldn't he get a hold of himself and make this sorted out? He knew he had to try, but he felt so… wrong-footed, so flooded with this stupid, crippling emotion, this stupid fear. Why wouldn't his stupid fucking brain work? "It's you, Draco. Not Hermione! This is different! I just-"

"I was never good enough for you, was I?" Draco broke in. " I'm always going to be a fucking Death Eater. I am never going to be fucking HERMIONE!" Draco raged on, shouting down Harry. Harry gasped for breath—there wasn't enough air in the room, for some reason—and struggled forward, throwing himself down in front of Draco and clutching himself to his knees. He would fix this; fixing things was what he did.

"I am always going to love you, Draco! Can you just listen to me?" he sobbed. Draco looked so strange, and Harry's mind kept thinking that they were back at the Manor, Hermione half-conscious on the floor next to them. He fought the sensation, but nevertheless his mind was frantic; how could he fix this? What could he do?

"Oh, fuck you, Harry," Draco responded coldly. "Get out, and get your stuff out. I'll see you at graduation, I fucking suppose." He pushed roughly at Harry, still clutching at Draco's knees, and Harry fell backwards away from him.

Sobbing so hard that he couldn't see, Harry got to his feet and blindly made his way to the door by memory. As he pulled it open, he could hear Draco begin to weep, too, and he stopped—now was the time to say the perfect thing that would keep Draco in love with him!-but Draco only said, "Keep the fuck going," and Harry obeyed.

Fortunately, there was nobody in the hallway. Harry called back to himself all of the techniques that his mind healer didn't like him to use, and thought fiercely, "Don't think about it. Don't think about it!" Within seconds, his grief transitioned to a once-familiar state of numbness, something that Harry found that he'd missed quite a lot, actually, and carefully, with focus, Harry made his features resemble that of a man not in pain. Taking care to walk normally, he headed straight to Hermione's room and knocked. Ron answered.

"Harry, Hermione just told me!" Ron answered gleefully, and unexpectedly wrapped Harry up in a hug. Harry let himself relax into it for a second, but it was too reminiscent of happiness, so he made himself numb again until Ron released him. "She's in the bathroom now, getting the last of her things, probably trying to sneak socks to the house elves. I just wanted to tell you, while she's gone, thank you from ME, Harry. I know you're doing this for Hermione, but her happiness is my happiness, too—you know? I know you know it's been kind of weird for me, this friendship that you and she have. But the fact that you would do this for her? I get it now; I understand it. I'm glad that she has you, because I know that no matter what, no matter what happens to me, she'll always have you to protect her, too. And this? Fuck, Harry… This, this means the world to Hermione, and so it means the world to me, too."

"Can you do me a favor, actually?" said Harry. "It's about Draco."

"Sure, Mate," Ron agreed. "Anything."

Harry pulled the envelope out of his back pocket that he'd intended to give to Draco before he left. He'd so been looking forward to watching Draco's face when he read the contents. All that was ruined now, of course. But even though it was over, he still wanted Draco to have this, to be happy, to have a good life. It had just been stupidity to think that it would be with him, when clearly he was so ruined, so gone, that even Draco could tell and must push him away. He handed the envelope over to Ron.

"Um, I don't want to say goodbye to Draco again, but I didn't give him this. Will you give it to him sometime before you separate at King's Cross tomorrow?"

"Sure!" said Ron cheerfully. "I won't have anything else to do tonight after you and Hermione leave. I'll take it over to him then. That way if he decides not to take the train after all, I won't have to worry about not seeing him."

"Sounds good," Harry said weakly. He wondered if he should warn Ron about the reception that any envelope coming from Harry was likely to receive from Draco, but decided not to. It was too long of a conversation, and one that he'd already decided would remain locked inside himself forever. He was going to go with Hermione and do what he promised, he was going to come back here and get his fucking diploma, and then he was going to fuck off to Grimmauld Place and stay there.

Turns out that had been a good plan, after all.

Just then Hermione came out of the bathroom, dressed for travel and carrying that bigger-on-the-inside fancy purse of hers. Laughing, Hermione ran across the room to jump into Harry's arms and hug him. "I'm so excited that I can't stand it!" she screamed into his ear. "Can we go right now?"

Harry winced, but smiled in spite of himself. He hefted Hermione more securely and asked, "That all your luggage?" Hermione nodded. "Well, kiss your boyfriend, then," Harry said, and leaned over so that Hermione could kiss Ron tenderly on the lips. "Right then, let's go get your parents' memories back," said Harry, and in the space of a breath, he made the two of them be in Australia.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: Harry and his world don't belong to me. I may be the brightest witch of my generation, but I'm not THAT good!

Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's read my story! Thank you to everyone who Favorited it and/or me (aww, you guys!), and especially thank you to everyone who reviewed!

It had not been easy. It had been the hardest thing Harry had ever done, actually; the human brain was a far more complicated opponent than Tom Riddle, it had turned out, and he couldn't just defeat that opponent once—no, he had to do it hundreds of thousands of times, for hundreds of thousands of paths to memories. Then he'd had to do it all a second time.

They'd had to break into Hermione's parents' house while they were sleeping (they'd woken, unfortunately, and not knowing Harry and Hermione, they had been terrified. Oh, they had been terrified! That look on Hermione's face, witnessing the terror of her own parents as they'd cringed away from her, Dr. Granger trying to shield his wife with his own body… well, don't think about it, okay?), and Hermione had had to perform continuous Stupefy spells and Incarcerous spells on her own parents, and Obliviate spells on visitors (including two police officers who had gotten reports of screaming coming from the house) who'd happened by while Harry had worked on her parents for 52 solid hours, and that had been hard on her. Hard on him, too, of course, but he didn't care anymore, simply would no longer call those feelings to hand.

Finally, when Harry had finally been one hundred percent sure that he'd found and made Hermione's parents recollect every single memory that there was of Hermione to recollect inside their heads, and when he and Hermione had been their most exhausted, the most drained they'd ever been, War or no, Hermione had had to deal with her parents' justified betrayal that their daughter would do this to them, their anger, their grief at having lived so much of their lives without her, and their guilt at that having even been possible. It had been hard. Fucking Merlin it had been so hard, but as Harry sat on the stage with the other eighth-years, listening to what he hoped would be the last speech that he would ever have to listen to, he saw the Grangers sitting in two seats near the front row, beaming at their daughter up there on stage with him, and he knew that it was worth it. That effort had been worth it. And yes, even losing Draco over it had been worth it, because of course Hermione needed her parents, and if he could give them to her, then of course he would.

Draco was on stage, too, but Harry didn't know what he wore, didn't know if Narcissa was also in the audience, smiling up proudly at him, didn't know if he'd liked his gift, or had even accepted it. He was very, VERY good at control now, so powerful that his mind healer, whom he'd never have to see again anyway now that he was graduated, would never be able to draw his feelings out again, and he would not let Draco into his head. Harry had Apparated into line just before they'd marched onstage, and planned to Apparate away again just after. He hadn't told Hermione what had taken place between him and Draco, nor did he plan to—he would not do or say anything to mar this happiness of hers—and if Ron had gotten anything about it from Draco, then, again, Harry wouldn't stick around to hear it.

Finally, they were doing the names now. Hermione's name was called, and the look on her face as she received her diploma, smiled at Minerva and shook her hand, then posed on the stage for her parents to take her picture with their Muggle camera was all the happiness that Harry was going to let himself need to feel. As a treat for having been so careful on this day, Harry spontaneously decided to let himself watch Draco's feet as his name was called and he, too, crossed the stage—Draco still wore the shoes that Harry had bought him, and that was all that Harry was going to let himself think about Draco.

The applause was predictably thunderous as Harry's name was called—Savior of the Wizarding World and all that, Harry thought grimly—but Harry didn't care to feel it, or to look at the crowd, or at his fellow students as he crossed the stage. Minerva said something about all his NEWTs, and the crowd cheered more, but Harry didn't listen. It's not like he was going to use any of those NEWTs, anyway. He shook Minerva's hand and received his diploma, but didn't meet her eyes, didn't let her hold him back to speak into his ear, and didn't pause for photographs. He crossed the stage as he was supposed to, and walked down the steps from the stage, but instead of joining the growing group of Hogwarts graduates waiting for him, he simply… left.

Grimmauld Place was supposed to be a peaceful respite, since so few people knew of its location, and yet Harry had barely finished dinner and settled into his favorite pastime—sitting quietly and staring into the fire—before Hermione's head popped into view in the flames. "Go be with your family," Harry said tonelessly, permitting himself to spare a single glance at her to confirm that she was well, then making himself look away and stare at the portrait next to the fire, instead. Some Black ancestor. Perhaps he had some interesting stories-

"Nope!" Hermione cheerfully replied, and came all the way through. "Molly's got them now. They're having a nice, long chat about kids breaking their parents' hearts that will occupy them until late tonight. Harry, why didn't you tell me?"

"Would you have wanted to go on with our plans if I had?"

"Of course not!" said Hermione indignantly, sitting down on the couch and turning to face Harry, who now couldn't make himself stay turned away from her. He reluctantly shifted, but would not let himself react further. "I'd have insisted that we go right back to Draco's room immediately and sort this out, and then it would have been sorted, and THEN we would have gone! Honestly, it didn't take Ron two minutes to explain things to Draco once he'd calmed down, and that's RON we're talking about! And he said that as soon as Draco really understood, he just—"

"Stop, Hermione," Harry said tiredly. " I don't want this anymore."

"Don't want what?"

"This. THIS! I don't want to hurt someone, or get hurt anymore. I don't want to have to explain myself, but nobody understands because I'm fucking stupid with words. I just… I just want to sit in my psycho house with my psycho house elf and just be left alone."

"Harry," Hermione said slowly and carefully. She had clearly learned a lot from her own mind healer. Where had that bossy, overbearing little girl gone? Oh, right—Bellatrix Lestrange had broken that little girl, and carved into her arm, and then-

Don't think about Bellatrix Lestrange.

"That's not okay," Hermione continued, deaf to the internal monologues that constantly vied for Harry's attention. "Why don't we call your mind healer? Do you have your Panic Portkey?"

"No, Hermione!" (Shit! Stop raising your fucking voice!). "I don't have to talk to her now that I've graduated, and I won't! (Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!). I've had months to talk with her, and where has it left me? Right back in Grimmauld Place, where I told her I wanted to be the very first time I met her! Now it's time for somebody to fucking believe me for a change, and let me BE!"

"I always believe you, Harry," said Hermione quietly. "Just do me a favor, will you? I won't make you leave, or call your mind healer, but you'll keep your wards open for me, won't you?"

"I will always keep my wards open for you, Hermione. You're… well, you're all I've got left, and I love you, and I'm going to let myself keep you." Harry leaned over and hugged Hermione, but despite himself he felt tears beginning to come, so he quickly stood up and said, "It's been a long week, Hermione. I'm going to take an equally long shower, I think."

"Alright, Harry. I'll go and see if Molly and my parents are ready to yell at me and Ron all together yet." Hermione kissed Harry on the cheek, helped herself to a pinch of his Floo powder from the mantle, and popped out of view.

Harry did help himself to a long, long shower, and every single time he thought about shampoo that was actually lube, he made the water turn cold to punish himself. "My mind healer would be having fits," he told himself, but couldn't make himself care.

Kreacher had his bathroom well-stocked with giant, soft, fluffy towels that he'd gotten from Merlin knows where—"Probably stole them from another house," Harry thought—so Harry dried himself off, resolutely not caring how messy his hair got after towel drying, since there was no one there to see him, and slung a fresh towel around his hips. He walked out of the bathroom in a billow of steam, then stopped short.

There, in his upstairs hallway, standing just outside of the bathroom door in a cloud of dissipating steam, stood Draco Malfoy.

Draco was dressed in the wizard suit that Harry had bought him, he dimly noticed. It would have pained him if he'd let it. What he did let himself react to was the fact that Draco had somehow bypassed his wards. Some of those wards were specifically anti-Draco wards, as a matter of fact. So not Draco, then. Death Eater, perhaps.

"What did you say to me when I told you that I had to go to Australia with Hermione instead of Grimmauld Place with you?" Harry asked, ever Moody's dutiful student. Of course, Moody would be pissed that Harry's wand was still in the bathroom, but then again, Harry didn't really need his wand to kill Death Eaters anymore, did he?

"I said the stupidest thing that I've ever said in my life, Harry. I said that you'd chosen Hermione over me. And I'm sorry. My mind healer says that I-"

Harry ignored him. "Really you, then. How did you get in?"

"Hermione."

"No fucking way. I'm more powerful than her, and I set the wards against you. Against YOU!" Harry hadn't meant for that last part to come out as a shout, hadn't meant to care enough to be shouting.

Draco flinched, but retorted, "Yeah, and she's the cleverest witch of her age, isn't she? She Polyjuiced me, then sent me by Floo from the Weasley's. They had a lot to say to me, by the way, and all deserved." Draco paused, then quietly said, "I met Hermione's parents. They're lovely, and they think the world of you. Told me that since they'd rather be dead than not know their daughter, they consider you to have saved their lives. Hermione's mom—well, even Ginny was shocked by what she called me, and you know the mouth she's got. It was true, though."

"Yeah, well, I told you about me and Hermione," Harry said, pushing past Draco and continuing down the hall to his room. "I told you that she was the only one who was always there for me."

"You did. I hate that you were right, that it was me who made you right, Harry." Draco followed Harry to his room, and stood facing him as Harry faced his closet, back turned and head bent, trying to act as if he was just getting clothes like normal. " I… I wasn't thinking straight, okay? I'd had… I'd had a breakdown during my Potions practical, and I just wasn't thinking! I held it together while Ron and I visited, but my mind wasn't… it wasn't okay, I wasn't thinking okay. When Ron showed back up at my door later, I fucking pulled him inside, asked how he'd gotten out of the dungeon, and tried to make him hide under my bed! When he wouldn't do it I started to cry because my mum was going to have to cut off my ears for letting people escape. Snape put them back on really well, don't you think?"

"Fucking Merlin…" Harry breathed, almost convinced despite himself, but then he shook it off and opened his closet, pulling out the first pair of jeans and T-shirt that he could reach.

"It's not okay, though, alright?" Draco just wouldn't stop, and Harry didn't know how to make him. Didn't have a plan for this. Didn't know how to act. "That doesn't make it okay. I was just hating myself so much, for being so fucking stupid, and so fucking cowardly, and ruining my chance at becoming a Potionmaster, and then I heard you, and I thought to myself, 'Well, of course he doesn't want me. Why would he want me? Hell, if I was bi, _I'd_ pick Hermione!'"

Harry turned around, but he couldn't make himself look at Draco. He stared at the floor instead. "I understand, Draco, and it's fine. I accept your apology. I'm not… I'm not going to get back together with you, though, if that's what you want. So if you could leave now, I'd appreciate it." He stood still, then, and waited for Draco to leave.

But Draco didn't. Instead, Draco took a step forward, causing Harry to step back a step toward his closed closet door. Draco reached out a hand to cup Harry's jaw, and even though Harry tried to flinch away, Draco held firm, and turned Harry's face until he had no choice but to look at him. Merlin, Draco's eyes were beautiful.

Stop fucking looking at Draco's fucking eyes, you fucking bastard!

"You don't understand, Harry," Draco said softly, and intently. "I was stupid, and I was cowardly, just like I had always been for my entire life, but I'm not anymore. Losing you broke me of that shit for good. I will fucking fight for you now, I will fight for you forever, I would claw out the eyes of fucking Voldemort himself if I had to in order to get to you. I love you, and against all reason you loved me, too, which was all I ever wanted out of life, and I managed to fuck it up, but I swear to you, Harold James Potter, that if you could love me again that I will NOT fuck it up again. I will hold onto you, and I will cherish you, and so help me I will love you more than anyone has ever loved another for all the days of my life. You just have to give me a second chance, Harry. You're so strong, and so brave, and you give so much to everyone. You've given everything that you are for people who don't even know you. You've given more to me than I ever deserved, or will ever be able to pay back. Will you just give me this one more thing? Please, Harry?"

Harry tried to hold onto his walls, but he felt them collapsing, and felt his face crumble in their wake. He wanted to tell Draco to leave, wanted to make him leave, told his body to MAKE DRACO LEAVE, but instead he found himself saying, brokenly, "You pushed me away."

Draco crushed Harry to his chest, so hard that Harry could feel a heart pounding, and couldn't tell if it was Draco's or his own. "I know, Love," Draco said, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry. I will never, ever, ever push you away again. If you let me, I will stay with you forever and never let you go again. Please let me prove it to you."

Harry felt his arms reach up, of their own accord, and return Draco's embrace, and with that, all of his carefully constructed walls fell, and the grief that he'd held at bay for the last week, had planned to hold at bay forever, crashed upon him, and he wailed in agony. He felt Draco's arms around him, felt Draco's mouth next to his ear, could hear that Draco was repeating something, the same words over and over, and was finally able to make them out. "Let me stay," Draco was saying, "Let me stay, Harry. Please, let me stay."

"Stay," Harry whispered in reply, and then he let himself cry.

Harry woke up alone the next morning, but only for a matter of seconds, and then in walked Draco, balancing a heavily-loaded tray of breakfast. "I had to practically punch your house elf in the face to get this to take to you," he said.

"I'm almost surprised Kreacher didn't punch you in the face first," Harry replied, sitting up. "He pulled Hermione's hair once, and then she actually slapped him. Not a shining moment for SPEW."

Draco sat cross-legged on the bed across from Harry, the way that they'd shared many picnics before. Thinking of that, Harry looked up at him, only to catch Draco watching him, instead. "What?" he asked.

"Sorry," said Draco. "I just can't get enough looking at you. Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did you give me this?" Draco pulled the envelope, creased and smudged, clearly having been carried around and handled often over the past week, out of his pants pocket.

Harry felt sick again just looking at it, reminded by it of that night. "It's your Christmas present, but I wanted to give it to you early, thought you and your mum might appreciate having it in time to get ready for the holidays."

"But why? Why did you…" Draco's voice broke. "Merlin, Harry, why did you give me half your fortune? You had to know that I can't take this!"

"That's not my fortune there," said Harry. "That belonged to Sirius. Disowned or not, he was the eldest male in the Black family, and he got everything. I was his godson, and when he… when Bellatrix sent him through the veil, well, he'd left everything to me in his will. But I'm not the Black family heir, am I? Not really. And I know that Andromeda is older than your mum, but Teddy's _my_ godson, and so he and Andromeda, she said it was fine- I'm taking care of them myself. They've got the Potter vaults with me, and I made Teddy a Lupin vault just for him. That goblin advisor is really useful."

"This is not what Sirius would have wanted, Harry."

"Yeah, it actually is. Sirius was all about family—real family, not that crap that the Blacks used to shout about. He'd have hated you, yeah, and by now he'd have killed you, but he loved me. He loved me so much, Draco, and he'd have wanted the man that I love to have what he needs, everything that he needs."

"And am I still the man that you love?" Draco asked quietly.

Harry's answer was quieter still, but he didn't hesitate before giving it. "Yeah, Draco, you are." Harry set the breakfast tray aside and leaned forward to kiss Draco. It was a passionate kiss, but not a rough one. It was filled with heat, but it wasn't urgent. That kiss smoothed over the rubble of the broken walls that Harry had not, in the end, hidden behind, and Harry, as he kissed Draco, was glad of it. He'd continue to mishandle things and Draco would probably continue to misunderstand and of course they'd continue to fight and Harry would absolutely have to un-fire his mind healer, but Harry could see, in this kiss, their future, too. They'd learn to handle things better and understand each other better and fight without driving each other away. They'd lean on each other, and make love (hopefully very soon), and they would have each other. Draco was what Harry had longed for, had lost, and finally, finally he had him back, and this time they would make it stick.

Finally, Harry had everything.


End file.
